Unimpressed by the ongoing PDO 2 debate, we have continued working on PDO/mysqlnd for MySQL. It turned out that the current status of PDO makes developing and testing a new driver a challenge. I spent quite a lot of time comparing the different behaviours of the various drivers in the hope I could find out how PDO drivers are supposed to work. The PDO documentation and the specification do not cover each and every detail. PDO really needs some love…

Why do people suggest to improve PDO before kicking-off a PDO 2 project?

The challenge of the day was to find out what PDO::FETCH_UNIQUE is about. All what the first page of the PDO manual tells you is, that is is a predefined (class) constant of the type INT. But luckily, there is more to learn about it on the manual page of …

Unimpressed by the ongoing PDO 2 debate, we have continued working on PDO/mysqlnd for MySQL. It turned out that the current status of PDO makes developing and testing a new driver a challenge. I spent quite a lot of time comparing the different behaviours of the various drivers in the hope I could find out how PDO drivers are supposed to work. The PDO documentation and the specification do not cover each and every detail. PDO really needs some love…

Why do people suggest to improve PDO before kicking-off a PDO 2 project?

The challenge of the day was to find out what PDO::FETCH_UNIQUE is about. All what the first page of the PDO manual tells you is, that is is a predefined (class) constant of the type INT. But luckily, there is more to learn about it on the manual page of …

If you’re verifying successful backups by using the last line of a mysqldump sql file that says “dump completed” - be aware that prior to version 5.0.27 mysqldump does not output that line. Confusion could ensue!

Although early registration for the MySQL Conference and Expo ended last week, there are still a number of discounts available (some even more than the $200 discount that early registration offered), and there is a very good reason for registering for the conference as soon as possible: tutorials are selling out fast. Really fast.

It should come as no surprise that with the Sun acquisition the registration numbers for this year's conference are through the roof. As anyone who's been to the Santa Clara Convention Center can attest, the ballrooms aren't meant to hold 500 people each. In fact, the maximum human …

When
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM

Where
BizTech
515 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville , AL 35816

Details
Brian Moon of dealnews.com will be discussing best practices for writing database backed web based applications. Many users teach themselves SQL and programming on the web. Other developers may have experience in enterprise desktop applications. No matter what your background, there are common mistakes made when deploying web based applications that use a database.

Also, at this event, we will be giving away two copies of NuSphere’s PhpED. Plus, everyone who attends can purchase any NuSphere product at 50% off.

Lunch will be served at this event.

…

As I run into the same mistake over and over again I am going to throw them out here in order to serve as a warning and a learning tool to others. Some of these may seem like I am beating a dead horse because you can find examples of these on other sites, in other blogs, or even in the manual. Despite the large amounts of data on the subjects these things still pop up. This is not a complete list, and this list is not in any order… so please don’t dispare if I miss your favorite common performance gaff. As I encounter more I will post them to the common mistakes category here on bigdbahead.com. Hopefully this list will grow to include a large subset of issues and maybe one or two people will take note and fix their applications and databases.

#1.) MORE IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER

We often see configuration examples where folks believe in the old adage more is better. Case in point if a 2MB sort buffer …

Well, in the “notes from the front line” part of this post…. I have been a MySQL DBA at The Pythian Group for three months (and 2 days) now. At most companies that is the probationary period, and I am still here, so that is a good sign….. So, after three months, how do I like [...]

We did a community townhall video session earlier this week with Jonathan Schwartz, Rich Green and myself.  You can view it online at http://ustream.tv/sun and at YouTube.  This is a pretty high-level discussion, but we responded to some questions that came in from the live chat about platforms, languages, patents, how Sun makes money from MySQL etc.  I was also hoping to resolve once and for all what remains one of the hot developer issues: vi vs emacs.  And in keeping with the MySQL tradition, we had a vodka toast at the end.

There were also more technical IRC sessions led by Kaj Arno and …

I'm talking at the MySQL User Conference once again this year presenting my Code Generators for MySQL Plugins and User Defined Functions in a formal session this time after my original "pizza & hacking" session on this topic on the 2006 UC (which ended up in hacking some other things on the way first ... photographs may follow ...).

The plugin and UDF code generators are based on the same foundation as my "pecl-gen" generator for PHP extensions so this might be of interest for hardcore PHP folks, too.

For more information see the Conference Schedule.

As Kaj announced, there was a IRC session with Ian Murdock on March 5.
Since I have been working in a virtual company for 18 months, I should not be surprised about this kind of events. Actually, IRC has become part of my life. I could not conceive working efficiently without it. When some new colleague asks me to have a simple phone call, without any IRC or other char facilities, I start shaking at the idea of such poor and antiquate way of communicating.
Even for one with experience, though, a public IRC meeting in a crowded #room is quite an experience. The "location" for the meeting is room #mysql on irc.freenode.net, a room that normally contains 400~500 people, where the level of noise is quite high.

Having a public …