In the global information age, you must get things right if you want to survive.
Mindless (mis)information.
My ISP, which has a near monopolistic position in my country, has a support phone line. I called it yesterday, because my DSL was down. The usual routine goes: dial #1 for phone, #2 for data problems. I dial #2, and I get a recorded voice "all operators are busy. You can get support at our web site, www.xxx.it". I just called you because I can't connect, you dumb!
Dumbest e-commerce ever
There is a huge movie theater nearby, which is convenient, but the queue at the ticket counter is uninspiring, especially during week-ends. So I check their online ticket sales. Can you believe this? They charge you an additional EUR 0.5 for online tickets. In my book, online services must be cheaper than manned ones, and this is why the airline and the books industries are moving their business online. Charging more for online tickets …

The last few month has been an interesting period for me. I used to work in the Database Technology Group, and as you may guess that group was affected by the acquisition of MySQL. The merge of the two teams are now complete, and we now all located in the Database Group.

During this merge it was natural to look at the staffing in the different projects, and I am extremely glad to see that the project I am working on get additional headcount.

I am therefore extremely exited over the fact that we have the following open positions in my team:

• Systems Technologist CT 3 in Menlo Park (CA)
• Memcached …

This release fixes bugs and changes the parser from SQL::Parser to DBIx::MyParsePP. This change was made in order to accommodate MySQL-specific deviations from Standard SQL. Unfortunately, this change also comes with the expense of a slow startup, but I think it is worth the trade-off. OmniMySQL can be downloaded here. CHANGELOG: 0.0.3 - 15 [...]

How To Set Up A Load-Balanced MySQL Cluster With MySQL 5.1

This tutorial is based on Falko Timme's tutorial for MySQL Cluster 5.0. It shows how to configure a MySQL 5.1 cluster with five nodes: 1 x management, 2 x storage nodes and 2 x balancer nodes. This cluster is load-balanced by an Ultra Monkey package which provides heartbeat (for checking if the other node is still alive) and ldirectord (to split up the requests to the nodes of the MySQL cluster).

The other day I was explaining options to someone who wanted to know about archiving data in MySQL. “So,” he said, “I might have to code my app to look for the data in two places?” The disadvantage of this is that his app might be more complex. Another disadvantage is that it might take two queries — if you look for a user in the usual location and it’s not there, you have to look for it elsewhere.

One way to deal with this, as long as the archived data is on the same server, is a UNION.

select user_id from user where user_id = 123
union all
select user_id from user_archive where user_id = 123;

The benefit is that you don’t have to issue two queries. That saves network round trips, and makes your code shorter. But it has a disadvantage, too: you’re still querying the archive table when you don’t …

As you probably know, I recently finished writing a book with a few co-authors. I kept notes along the way and wanted to describe the process for those who are thinking about writing a book, too.

Update: see the followup post for more of the story, including my editor’s responses.

I think it’s important to be objective; my purpose here is to help prospective authors get a feeling of what it’s like, and it’s not all good (but I’d encourage people to do it anyway). Hopefully I won’t come off as sounding peeved at anyone or like I’m trying to put people down. I’ll have a lot to say about what went right and wrong, and how it helped and hindered the process.

Please excuse the rambling nature of this post. I’d love to …

Week 2(2nd June – 9th June)

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS LAST WEEK

1. Switched from Windows to Ubuntu and learnt a few linux commands that will help me while coding for mysql in the long run.
2. Installed VS2005 Express and created the mysql.sln project file to view the complete mysql coding. However the build failed … The cl compiler was not available.

KEY TASKS THAT STALLED LAST WEEK

1 Building mysql from source.

a. On cygwin

b. On VS 2005 Express

c. On Ubuntu 6.06

All of the above installations had some setup issues, and debugging them was time consuming and a nightmare but things are getting sorted now.

KEY CONCERNS

Building mysql from source is problematic and time-consuming due to it’s dependencies on various tools. This fact has been stated in …

Week 2(2nd June – 9th June)

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS LAST WEEK

1. Switched from Windows to Ubuntu and learnt a few linux commands that will help me while coding for mysql in the long run.
2. Installed VS2005 Express and created the mysql.sln project file to view the complete mysql coding. However the build failed … The cl compiler was not available.

KEY TASKS THAT STALLED LAST WEEK

1 Building mysql from source.

a. On cygwin

b. On VS 2005 Express

c. On Ubuntu 6.06

All of the above installations had some setup issues, and debugging them was time consuming and a nightmare but things are getting sorted now.

KEY CONCERNS

Building mysql from source is problematic and time-consuming due to it’s dependencies on various tools. This fact has been stated in …

Week 1 (26th May – 2nd June)

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS LAST WEEK

• My friend Abdullah (mail id: abdullah.ak2002@gmail.com), who is collaborating with me and giving me a helping hand for my GSoc project met my mentor Brian Aker in the India Shock Tour 2008. link : http://in.sun.com/sunnews/events/2008/mysql/
• Ran through the mysql slap code with Brian Aker and obtained tips from him as well as learnt some more about the “Exciting Requirements” for mysqlslap.
• We are currently reviewing various options for extending mysqlslap
  • Initially we had thought of adding some functions to mysqlslap
  • Brian Aker gave us a few suggestions with respect to developing an interpreter for mysqlslap. (Thank you Brian J). …

Week 1 (26th May – 2nd June)

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS LAST WEEK

• My friend Abdullah (mail id: abdullah.ak2002@gmail.com), who is collaborating with me and giving me a helping hand for my GSoc project met my mentor Brian Aker in the India Shock Tour 2008. link : http://in.sun.com/sunnews/events/2008/mysql/
• Ran through the mysql slap code with Brian Aker and obtained tips from him as well as learnt some more about the “Exciting Requirements” for mysqlslap.
• We are currently reviewing various options for extending mysqlslap
  • Initially we had thought of adding some functions to mysqlslap
  • Brian Aker gave us a few suggestions with respect to developing an interpreter for mysqlslap. (Thank you Brian J). …