My wife wants to learn database design. She is an archaeologist. She wants to read a book written in plain English, not h4×0r jargon. She is smart and capable and knows her own data, but does not know SQL or database theory. She wants to be able to design databases and be understood by others who know database design. She also wants to be able to explain her ideas to a programmer who will build the systems she’s designing. Is there a book for her?

Books, Database Design

While I’ve known how floating points are stored, I didn’t know if decimal was stored any differently, or if it was more or less accurate. According to a post on the MySQL list:

Bruno Rodrigues Silva wrote:
> Dear all.
>
> The MySQL Manual inform that Decimal Data Type is used
> for represent exact-number, but like Float Point Data
> Type, Decimal use rounding case the fractional part is
> not sufficient. Therefore, what the difference?

Hi Bruno,

FLOAT rounds as floating point and DECIMAL rounds as you would expect it
to. Floating point arithmetic is not exact and that’s why they’ve called
DECIMAL an “exact packed decimal number” because apparently you can rely
on it’s roundings.

The primary use for DECIMAL is money, where floating point would fail
…

I will take MySQL certification exams, therefore I am going through MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide. It is a pretty cool book in that it goes to the point right away without many wasted words. Too many technical books dance around the topic, fill the volume with screen shots, but do not deliver the goods in the end. I am reading the Safari online version. With so many pages, I can see the physical book can be bulky.

Anyway, some comments and observations:

1. Sybase, MySQL, and Sql Server’s definition and implementation of database and schema are somewhat close. I dislike Microsoft’s definition and usage of schema, especially in Sql Server 2005. It is very confusing to new or DBAs from other platforms.

Sybase, MySQL, and Sql Server all support the USE …

More user group meetings in the coming days.
The meetup/mashup tour are events where the Sun and MySQL communities will meet, merge, discuss technology, socialize, and drink together.
On April 2nd the meetup is in a pub in Paris, where I expect that the drinking will overcome the technology, but I will let you know if things turn out different.
Milan will follow on April 3rd, in a more conservative venue (Sun conference hall), but the drinking doesn't have to be underestimated.
Hamburg on April 7th and Berlin on 8th will be definitely technical. The technical drink will start after the geeky stuff.

As you know, Sun's open source software and microprocessor strategy has been, at times controversial. We've filled trade journals and chat rooms with all kinds of dialog and the occasional crackpot conspiracy theory.

As many have rightly assumed from the outset, that controversy was, in fact, not a byproduct of the strategy - it was the strategy: if you're talking about Sun, you're not talking about the other guy. And then you'll buy a datacenter.

But now that we've firmly established our reputation for open source leadership, I'm very worried there's no more controversy to be had. There's too much trust in the system, and too much clarity around our strategic intent. So it's getting tougher and tougher to kick up a storm - and we can't very well spend a billion dollars or change our ticker symbol every time we want to generate a headline. Now can …

What does any developer do during a train trip? Correct, he’s hacking. He’s at least working on bells and whistles such as foreach() support for buffered ext/mysqli result sets in mysqlnd. Thanks Andrey!

$link = mysqli_connect('host', 'user', 'password');
$res = mysqli_query($link, 'SHOW TABLES FROM mysql');
foreach ($res as $row)
  var_dump($row);
mysqli_free_result($res);
mysqli_close($link);

Note: SVN/CVS only, mysqlnd only, buffered result sets only, no way to enforce any other fetch mode but MYSQLI_FETCH_ASSOC - but quite handy anyway.

What does any developer do during a train trip? Correct, he’s hacking. He’s at least working on bells and whistles such as foreach() support for buffered ext/mysqli result sets in mysqlnd. Thanks Andrey!

$link = mysqli_connect('host', 'user', 'password');
$res = mysqli_query($link, 'SHOW TABLES FROM mysql');
foreach ($res as $row)
  var_dump($row);
mysqli_free_result($res);
mysqli_close($link);

Note: SVN/CVS only, mysqlnd only, buffered result sets only, no way to enforce any other fetch mode but MYSQLI_FETCH_ASSOC - but quite handy anyway.

What does any developer do during a train trip? Correct, he’s hacking. He’s at least working on bells and whistles such as foreach() support for buffered ext/mysqli result sets in mysqlnd. Thanks Andrey!

$link = mysqli_connect('host', 'user', 'password');
$res = mysqli_query($link, 'SHOW TABLES FROM mysql');
foreach ($res as $row)
  var_dump($row);
mysqli_free_result($res);
mysqli_close($link);

Note: SVN/CVS only, mysqlnd only, buffered result sets only, no way to enforce any other fetch mode but MYSQLI_FETCH_ASSOC - but quite handy anyway.

While searching for something else, I just came across this blog entry which was apparently written late january: MySQL: the harpooned dolphin

It is, of course, fairly ill informed and full of errors. I won't even bother going through it all.
Actually, I can't for the life of me work out whether that site is satirical or for real. Looking through some of the more recent posts (election stuff), I'm wondering whether it might actually be real and is authored by some fanatical American republican zealot going nuts online. Or it's some smart person doing a real good impersonation of such a nut. Who knows...

Hmm, the site appears to be running Wordpress and PHP on Linux, and there's phpinfo() output somewhere with a modified PHP logo showing a seal. So, satire after all? Very well done in that case, but …

In the grand tradition of April Fool's stunts at Sun, the MySQL team decided to drape the Sun Menlo Park campus with inflatable pink and blue MySQL Dolphins! Marketing communications guru Steve Curry came up with the idea and we assembled a crackerjack team of local MySQLers to inflate 500+ dolphins late into the evening, with one dolphin for every member of Sun's Database Technology Group. Then we put on our all-black ninja wear (complete with Groucho disguise glasses) and we split up into teams to strategically place dolphins all around the Menlo Park campus well into the early hours... READ MORE