This post is mostly off topic, but I do no know there are quite a few runners in the open source world. We have a modest-sized running club at MySQL with many marathoners, and there's also guys like Marc Fleury, Matt Asay who have also run marathons. (The SugarCRM guys seem to be avid cyclists, and once in a while I ride with them in the hills around Cupertino, but for me it's not the same thrill as running a marathon. Call me weird.) At any rate, I went to see the movie "Spirit of the Marathon" the other night.... READ MORE

This is all my personal rant based on my little investigation as I have been very upset.

If you're the one who I am targeting this post to: please don't take it personally. You have no one but yourself to blame for this backlash.

==start rant==
So, Looking at the sites of one-who-shall-not-be-named-or-linked-to-any-more or aka wolf in sheep's clothing, I am coming to an opinion. To me, it seems like he is basically using his sites to benefit his current and/or future clients. He also seems to be a DMOZ editor or very closely associate with it, something that really hurts his credibility in my eyes. DMoz should be shredded by now as it has absolutely no value other than to lame SEOs who still either beg editors to get their site listed or enjoy being begged to. Even the parent company of DMoz has no interest in it. I mean come on. If you are 1% serious in your "database research" business you wouldn't spend time …

For those that worried about having to go to lulu.com to order copies of the Cluster certification study guide, I just noticed that the Amazons of the world now have the book listed:

Not only do they have them, they stock them too, so you can have immediate delivery.

If you’re not an Amazon customer, you will undoubtedly be able to find/order the book in other places as well.

So after my recent battle with "dirty" email addresses, I decided to find some validating functions to help people and myself in the future. Most of them use regular expressions.
So here they are:

MySQL stored function
Taken from - http://forge.mysql.com/snippets/view.php?id=62

DELIMITER $$
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `test`.`is_valid_email` $$
CREATE DEFINER=`root`@`localhost` FUNCTION `is_valid_email`(p_email varchar(64)) RETURNS tinyint(1)
BEGIN
CASE
WHEN NOT (SELECT p_email REGEXP '^[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$')
THEN
-- bad data
RETURN FALSE;
ELSE
-- good email
RETURN TRUE;
END CASE;
END $$
…

Hardly rocket science, but this annoyed me enough to jot it down in case it might be useful for others…

The MySQL manual page on INSERT syntax could perhaps be a little more thorough on how to write INSERTs with ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE. So here’s a slightly more thorough example of valid syntax than the one given in the manual.

In the example, the reports table’s Primary Key is (id, year)

INSERT INTO reports
SET id='9612', year='2007', net_income=123456, equity=12345, number_of_employees=123
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE net_income=123456, equity=12345, number_of_employees=123


Notice in this syntax:

• I’m using SET colname=value syntax in the INSERT part of the statement. You don’t need to do this, but notice how the parts marked in blue are the exact same in both parts of the …

Just a short reminder: the Hamburg MySQL Meetup Group will meet next week, on Monday the 4th of February! As usual, there will be a MySQL-related talk - this time I will use this opportunity to practice my talk about "Performing MySQL Backups using LVM Snapshots" that I will present at the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo 2008 in Santa Clara, CA. In addition to that I assume that there will be some questions about the acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun - I will try to answer these as good as I can. Looking forward to meet you next week. Please make sure to RSVP either via Meetup.com or …

To Curt Monash, in response to his latest attacks on MySQL, all I have to say is:

"Those who just know how to use a hammer, approach every problem as if it were a nail."

This March you can start earning a vendor-neutral 'certification focuses on universal database design principles and SQL. Aimed at database programmers and administrators alike, the exam helps solve the problem of poorly designed databases and validates foundational knowledge of any database, regardless if it?s Oracle, IBM, DB2, MySQL or others.'

The good folks at at CIW-Certified.com have the details at http://www.ciw-certified.com/exams/1d0541.asp and I wish them luck. It is very hard to stay vendor neutral and cover enough detail. The LPI Linux exams felt stunted to me on areas like backup, software updates, and best practices. My fingers are cross that the CIW folks have all those sort of problems worked out of their exam. I will look into this cert when March rolls around.

I recently got my eyes opened to a lot of things in Oracle world from meeting George Trujillo , one of MySQL's Senior Instructors at the recent …

The world tour proceeds. After Sydney, I am now in Melbourne, to attend the Linux Conf Au, hosted at Melbourne University. I am actually lodged at the charming Trinity College.

I have already met several known people and many more new people. Currently, I am getting ready for my presentation on MySQL Proxy at the MySQL mini-conf, and I have also a surprise presentation that will happen during the lighting talks.
Curious? You should be! See you tomorrow afternoon for the surprise talk!