It’s the 84th blog-tacular edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs! We begin with some Oracle security news. A tutorial of Oracle’s on defending against SQL injection attacks gets a good review on Pete Finnigan’s Oracle security weblog. Pete writes, “This is a superb tutoral, well written and positioned just right. . . . [...]

I’m pleased to announce that after almost one year since the last release, the new version is available. There are many new features this time around. Originally it was titled Monolith MySQL Backup Manager, but because of the new features it has been changed to the new name. You can download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/monolith-mysql

Screenshots:

Features:

1. Graphing / Trending with variable date reporting
   • Query rate + Data growth
   …

If you're looking for a seasoned, open-source savvy executive team, you might look to MySQL or another leading open-source company. But if you want that team to come with investment dollars attached, you'd do far better to look to Benchmark Capital. In addition to Kevin Harvey (MySQL, Red Hat, etc.) and Peter Fenton (JBoss, Hyperic, SpringSource, etc.), Benchmark just added four new EIRs (Entrepreneurs in Residence), two of which will focus on open-source investment opportunities.

Benchmarks's Bob Kagle notes the importance of EIRs:

By bringing seasoned executives into the firm to found new businesses or work with our portfolio companies, everyone benefits. They understand the challenges of running a start-up, and demonstrate by example what it takes to build, manage and lead …

Some tips around MySQL and SMF on OpenSolaris.

You can enable the MySQL server by starting it through svcadm

% svcadm enable mysql

Although for current builds since the integration on build 79, you need to do this manual stuff first:

% su -
% cd /var
% mkdir mysql
% /usr/sbin/groupadd mysql
% /usr/sbin/useradd -g mysql -d /var/mysql mysql
% chown mysql:mysql mysql

So if your MySQL service is going into maintenance:

% svcs | grep mysql
maintenance    11:03:45 svc:/application/database/mysql:version_50

You could find out more what happened by doing:

% svcs -x
svc:/application/database/mysql:version_50 (MySQL RDBMS)
 State: maintenance since February 15, 2008  2:25:49 PM CET
Reason: Restarting too quickly.
   See: http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-L5
   See: MySQL 5.0.45(1)
   See: http://dev.mysql.com/docs
   See: /var/svc/log/application-database-mysql:version_50.log
Impact: This service is …

Looks like I will be at the MySQL Conference and Expo again this year. I try to attend as many sessions as possible, but I always end up meetin’-n-greetin’ and I’m sure this year will be no different.

So if I owe you a beer, or more importantly if you owe me a beer, you know where I’ll be.

Of course and as always, if you are interested in joining the MySQL Support Team you can drop me an email or catch me on Freenode or trip me as I walk by and we can meet up at the conference and discuss the subject!

Some tips around MySQL and SMF on OpenSolaris.

You can enable the MySQL server by starting it through svcadm

% svcadm enable mysql

Although for current builds since the integration on build 79, you need to do this manual stuff first:

% su -
% cd /var
% mkdir mysql
% /usr/sbin/groupadd mysql
% /usr/sbin/useradd -g mysql -d /var/mysql mysql
% chown mysql:mysql mysql

So if your MySQL service is going into maintenance:

% svcs | grep mysql
maintenance    11:03:45 svc:/application/database/mysql:version_50

You could find out more what happened by doing:

% svcs -x
svc:/application/database/mysql:version_50 (MySQL RDBMS)
 State: maintenance since February 15, 2008  2:25:49 PM CET
Reason: Restarting too quickly.
   See: http://sun.com/msg/SMF-8000-L5
   See: MySQL 5.0.45(1)
   See: http://dev.mysql.com/docs
   See: /var/svc/log/application-database-mysql:version_50.log
Impact: This service is …

I found myself thinking this evening about how someone could set about writing aggregate functions using Perl and on an idle Google search, came across this webpage entitled User-defined Aggregate Functions in DB2 Universal Database.I wondered if a similar technique could be applied for our implementation of External Language Stored Procedures for MySQL. It turns out that the answer is:

Once in a while I hear people talking about using thousands or tens of thousands of tables in one MySQL database and often how it “doesn’t work”. There are two things to say to them:

• Are you nuts?!
• Sure it works

I’ll elaborate a little on both …

Why’d you do that? Are you nuts?!

In most cases when extraordinarily many tables are brought up the “correct answer” is: Fix your schema to not duplicate the same table layout for each customer/user/site/…!

Once in a while though there are good reasons to have way too many lots of tables. Even “takes too long to fix the application now” can be a good enough answer sometimes.

My use case was to use the many tables as an extra “index” for a situation that a regular index couldn’t cover. Tens of thousands of tables, here we come.

…

Today was a mini-Pythian day at RMOUG. Both Alex and myself gave two presentations each. My first session was on using LDAP with Oracle Applications. It was at 8:30am and there were a few brave souls that fought the snow and icy road conditions to make it. The group was small and I was pleasantly surprised that almost everyone in the room indicated that they were currently using LDAP, although most were NOT using Oracle LDAP offering ( Oracle Internet Directory).

George Trujillo was presenting on MySQL for the Oracle DBA in the same room, so I stayed and learned a few things. Although I must have been really tired as I missed his comments on the Blackhole engine for database replication. George also shared some of his experiences from customer sites visits. All in all, I am glad I stayed.

Riyaj Shamsudeen had an interesting session on De-bunking the Myths about redo-undo-rollback. I enjoyed this presentation style of making an …

Thanks to Tony Lawrence for inspiring today’s post. Hopefully these links don’t stink. 

Anthony Lawrence: Reasons I Don’t Like Social Media

Tools that once were valuable for pointing out the best of the web often become obsolete or spammy (you might say this about Digg). Tony’s example is StumbleUpon, a link sharing site that I love.  He contends that the social networking site has become clogged with junk or at least doesn’t provide consistent "quality" links. [Updated: Actually check the post comments for …