This is just a quick start for a brainstorming of what we all hate in todays CMS (I am including portal/community software here as well and I guess most also applies to web shops) software out there. I have written a very small CMS application myself ages ago so I do not have experience in what its really like writing and maintaining a big one. All I know is that its insanely painful to deal with any of them, though if your site is all about having admins managing tons of static content or end users wanting to interact, there is little way around these ugly beasts. I guess it all boils down to how to persist changes made through and admin panel. Somewhat related is the issue of scalability which to me mainly boils down to how easily can the storage logic be changed without changing the business logic on top.

The biggest gripe that results from these ever so powerful admin panels is the tendency to have these settings stored in the …

So Monty now claims that Oracle is MySQL's main competitor. Given that for years MySQL AB has said the exact opposite is kinda odd. They did have a short run in with SAP but that didn't go any where .. well it resulted in MySQL loosing focus, adding tons of barely functioning features which ended up in this entire roadmap debacle we are still suffering through. Anyways the EC has thrown in their hat to stop the deal. Björn seems to share their concerns and so do many others it seems. I still don't get it. This is my attempt at clarifying my point of view and also making sure that people remember the proper terminology (stop using commercial and proprietary as synonyms).

First this all revolves around the assumption that Oracle lets MySQL linger.

Secondly, anyone can provide commercial support …

Then please contact us:  i n f o (at) o u r d e l t a (dot) o r g

What are the requirements? Having a server with HTTP access and no hassles with low traffic limits. At this stage you’ll need about 5GB disk space, and you’ll use rsync to sync from the master servers (we’ll provide you with a script to help with that). Thanks!

With the new releases the traffic is up (not surprising) and while our existing mirrors appear to be doing ok so far, it’ll be good to have more available before we run into capacity or speed problems. We also haven’t yet split for geographic location, that too becomes a possibility with more mirrors.

One of the elements that I have wanted to add to the installation chapter for some time has been some flowcharts to make understanding the steps required to successfully complete an installation on various platforms. The Windows one is the most interesting, because not only do we have the installer, but we also have the MySQL Server Instance Config Wizard which has its own sequence of steps to configure an instance of the server. I’m still working out and refining the examples and the graphics, but here is an example of the config wizard output:

Hopefully the full suite of images will be in the documentation shortly – all …

Ok, seems like this is one of my yearly rituals: Trying to build some momentum behind PDO. So far it has remained lingering after every such attempt, not that this isn't partially at least my fault. I think last time I said I would work on the tests and in the end I didn't get anywhere. Unfortunately nobody came around to kick me for this lack of commitment and so the idea faded again. So enough with the gloom today is a fresh start and I think one thing has changed significantly since then: We have people posting patches for PDO on internals and someone (aka Matteo) that has been fairly steadily trying to close some tickets. Pierre also seems to be interested in putting in some time. Scott has always been committed to the SQLite driver and Ilia and …

So I guess the argument that Monty is putting forth is that MySQL's future depends on some company exploiting their ownership of the MySQL copyright. As in, he feels that MySQL future will fall apart if there isn't a company that makes its money by dual licensing MySQL under some proprietary license. Amazingly enough Stallman, chief hater of all things proprietary, agrees. Hell seems to have frozen over. I however humbly disagree. The MySQL community has already left the dual licensing model behind. Sun has never shipped the "best" MySQL version, the community has!

Obviously since many of the patches that make the community versions better have not been licensed to Sun, they can't of course apply these patches to their distro without leaving their proprietary customers …

Here’s a quick flowchart for the different ways that Kontrollbase gathers and processes data.

We have lots of things on the go right now (over and above the normal process of keeping things up to date), and one of the main projects for me is to do a complete rebuild of the installation chapter (Installing and Upgrading MySQL). I’ll be starting with the 5.1 manual, then the 5.4 manual. Any future manuals should be based on these so we should be up to date for future generations. What I’m doing:

• Re-structuring the chapter to make it easier to follow on a platform basis. The old structure mixed content for different binary and source types, and different platforms, across a number of sections, making it very difficult to follow the instructions for your chosen platform.
• Make some things generic. There are sections which are generic and apply to all (or at least many) different installation types.
• Make some things …

We have lots of things on the go right now (over and above the normal process of keeping things up to date), and one of the main projects for me is to do a complete rebuild of the installation chapter (Installing and Upgrading MySQL). I’ll be starting with the 5.1 manual, then the 5.4 manual. Any future manuals should be based on these so we should be up to date for future generations.

What I’m doing:

• Re-structuring the chapter to make it easier to follow on a platform basis. The old structure mixed content for different binary and source types, and different platforms, across a number of sections, making it very difficult to follow the instructions for your chosen platform.
• Make some things generic. There are sections which are generic and apply to all (or at least many) different installation types.
• Make …