We’re proud to announce that Release Candidate 1 is waiting on our Mirrors to be downloaded. More than 50 bugs were fixed and some additional improvements were incorporated into this build.  The connections drawing has been reworked. Now relationship-lines are evenly spaced along the sides of the table-figures. For SE version we also added a new relationship-notation where lines are connected directly from/to corresponding columns. DDL-Syntax of views is now parsed while editing - this also automates naming of the view-objects to the name used in DDL. Workbench-Overview-Page has been cleaned up and improved. And another SE feature - new pages for validation in SQL export plugins were added.
So please fetch our latest version and give it a try.

Recently I have been asked by my company to make a case for open-source ETL-data integration tools as an alternative for the commercial data integration tool, Informatica PowerCenter.
So I did a lot of research and I'm going to try my best, considering I have never used the open-source tools nor the commercial one.

I found plenty of information about comparisons between Pentaho Kettle and Talend, which were 2 of the open-source tools I was supposed to research.
Now, without getting in a big arguement (or matt casters posting on my blog), I'd like to attempt to compare the two, very briefly.
And again, this is ONLY from the research I did online and not based on my experience using the tools (since I dont really have any).


…

Here is the video of “Database Basics”, which I presented at the February 2008 Boston MySQL User Group meeting. The presentation goes over the basics of relations, data, the Entity-Relationship Model, how to choose data types, and how to do basic CREATE statements.

You can download:

the video (Large, 500 MB, or Small, 100 MB)
and
the slides (PDF, 171 Kb).

Or just watch the video:

Snappy Interviews: 100 Questions to Ask Oracle DBAs is one of those valuable books that you need to have in your library if you interview Oracle talent or are a technical recruiter.

I am neither right now, but author Christopher Lawson has some great advice for interviewers. There is an art to asking questions and this book is skillfully written to show this art.

Niche questions seeking very arcane knowledge do not test the breath of skills and knowledge of a interviewer. A few questions on minutia are fair game. But you want to quickly access what is in the candidate's skull as relates to the job at hand and not ascertain if they would be a good partner for Trivial Pursuit.

Question the understanding of concepts. The ability to recite rote memorized lists usually fails at three o'clock in the morning. And ask about the entire breadth of the position, just not one small segment. …

Is there a difference? Yes there is, and it's very significant both in functionality as well as in speed.

COUNT(*) counts rows. If the underlying table is MyISAM, and there's no WHERE clause, then this is extremely fast as MyISAM maintains a row count of the entire table. Otherwise, the server just needs to count the number of rows in the result set. Which is different from....

COUNT(col) which actually counts all not-NULL values of col in the result set. So here, the server needs to iterate through all the rows, tallying for which rows col has a not NULL value. Of course, if the col is NOT NULL the server may be able to optimise this, but I'm not sure - after all it's a result set not a base table.

Anyway, there ya go. I spot this with customers, and where possible changing to COUNT(*) can often result in a serious speed improvement. Nice little trick.

I’m still looking for new entries. I get quite a few suggestions, but not all of them make it into quiz questions. Do send in your suggestions!

Short questions with somewhat involved answers. In terms of MySQL (and databases in general)…

1. What is a character set?
2. What is a collation?
3. How do they interact?
4. Is this something you even need to worry about?

(more…)

I’m still looking for new entries. I get quite a few suggestions, but not all of them make it into quiz questions. Do send in your suggestions!

Question: Where can you find a really cool Pop Quiz — like question on the syntax (and pitfalls) of the CASE statement?

(more…)

The new program wants to strengthen the relationship …

One of the major additions to MySQL 5.1 is the the event scheduler. It is an internal scheduler, which does not need any help from the operating system. As such, it works independently in every platform.
One drawback of this feature, though, is that it can't communicate with the operating system. i.e. the event scheduler can't read system files, can't send e-mail messages, store data into log files. It can only work within the database server. This is convenient for security, but it is quite limiting. Time for hacking!

In getting started with MySQL Proxy I showed an example of how to run shell commands from any MySQL client. Unfortunately, this method can't be used with the events, because events can't send queries to the …

Ever thought about dialing someone when you're three-sheets-to-the-wind to let them know how you really feel?  Now instead of calling your ex, your boss or your soon to be ex-boss, all-star MySQL web developer Dups has created the St Patrick's Day Drunk Dial phone line.  Now your innermost drunken thoughts are safe and stored with millions of web listeners around the world.

I tested out the service after a few celebratory MySQL vodka shots and it works as advertised. I just hope I don't win.  Otherwise I'll have to call back and beg to be disqualified.  It's a great service to society, but I can't help but wonder: What about the other 51 weeks of the year?

Check it out.  I'm sure this is powered by open source.  But remember, not every web site is gonna win MySQL …