It took a while, but I finally found time to upgrade my MySQL certifications from 4.1 to 5.0 and also the Cluster 5.1 one. Good feeling I passed them all on the first try! But, it ain't easy! Even me having worked on some questions, and reviewing the Cluster ones more than a year ago, I made mistakes. Not easy!

There is an old joke about the concert violinist on his first visit to New York City who finds himself lost and late for rehearsal. So he asks a police officer, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

The cop answers, "Practice, practice!"

If you new to the world of databases (or MySQL's world of databases) and want to do well on your MySQL certification tests, one of the best things you can do to internalize the knowledge needed is to practice. And the best practice tool is out there for free at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/ under Example Databases.

The MySQL Student Guides from our excellent training classes and our Certification Guides use the World database in their examples. I encourage you to type in the examples and work through any exercises our questions with this wonderful collection of tables.

Then work up your own exercises. Write a query to display the head of state and …

One thing that sometimes bugs me in MySQL is the huge amount of errata. The database is packed with features and abilities that are side-effects from "historical decisions". Decisions that were made when it wasn't planned to be an enterprise product, or changes made to ease porting applications to MySQL from other databases. Legacy, so to speak.

The timestamp data type is a good example - the timestamp manual section is a long list of exceptions and special cases. I usually re-read the manual page before using it. Another good example is the amount of date and time functions that exist in MySQL. There are way too many of them, some overlapping in function, and some just exist as aliases to other functions for compatibility. Just go over the list.

On …

We uploaded a updated beta release 5.0.14a to our mirrors yesterday. There was a small issue (with not so small effects) where some users were unable to open files created with earlier versions of MySQL Workbench. Please fetch this update to avoid this problem.

A quick tourThere are many new features in the Forge:

In Quiz #5, we looked at the following CREATE TABLE and INSERT:

CREATE TABLE test (
  id varchar(1) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (id)
);
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('0'), ('1'), ('2'), ('a'), ('b');

The INSERT succeeds, and the table contains 5 rows.
The multi-row INSERT … VALUES (…), (…), … syntax is completely legal in MySQL. But…

1. is it portable to other Relational Database Management Systems such as Oracle, MS-SQL, DB2, Firebird, Postgresql, …?
2. is this standard SQL syntax?

(more…)

I read this article recently about how BI users just really love and are used to their Excel sheets for almost anything they do. My first reaction was "duh". My second reaction was that even I used Excel recently to help me data cleanse some contact information.
Its easy to use, the functions are clear, I can develop my own functions in VBA, I can use colors to see problems with values, etc...
I mean I can bet you that "even" if you use MySQL and you want to play around with the data to see if you can find anything, you would use Excel.

But as the article says, there are some drawbacks in terms of time spent fixing errors and if you use Excel sheets that connect to other Excel sheet and then you go and insert a column or something.


Anyway, the …

Like I said my last post, the new MySQL Forge commenting system is pretty slick. It gives commenters a lot of freedom in how they wish to display their comments, including syntax-highlighted code sections, while at the same time being security-conscious about XSS attacks and such. The HTMLPurifier and GeSHi PHP libraries are used in tandem to give flexibility and security at the same time.

The code to enable this is fairly short. For you PHP devs out there, here is the code that does everything for cleaning and "codifying" the comments:

1. /**
2.   * Highlights the text as code in the supplied language
3.   *
4.   * @return string The marked up code
5.   * @param subject The text to markup
6.   * @param …

As anyone close to me can attest, my life over the past six months or so has revolved consistently around planning for the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo. However, in my abundant free time not reviewing proposals, working with sponsors, and organizing the conference events, I've also been working on a new version of the MySQL Forge platform. In fact, the new code base is almost a complete rewrite from the original one. I'm pretty pleased with the new platform, and Giuseppe and I have been doing a bunch of testing to get things to where they are now. And we'd like your help in the final testing of Forge 2.0 before it hits the mean streets of the Internet.

So, what exactly is new about Forge 2.0? Well, lots of things actually. …

In summary: Who: you, me, MySQL/Sun What: MySQL User Group with free swag, food, and a short workshop to boot. When: 7-9 pm, Monday March 10th Where: MIT Building E-51, room 372 Why: why the heck not! Because Sun just bought MySQL, and because there’s a user group each month. How: RSVP optional but requested [...]