Last week Paul released version 0.5Alpha of the new BLOB Streaming Engine and so I thought I would take some time to see what is new and do a bit more benchmarking. This time around, Paul concentrated on a new method of handling BLOBs. Instead of storing them directly in a table, you can now store a reference to them in the MyBS repository. Each database can have its own repository (which exists in the database directory on the filesystem) and you can also control how large the repository file can grow before another file is created.

This further abstracts BLOBs from MySQL itself, but does allow one to easily be able to insert BLOBs using a simply HTTP PUT method, although in order to store the BLOB permanently, you need to actually insert the reference into the database. If you don't, the MyBS engine will delete the BLOB …

Today, Fotolog reached the ten million member milestone. As a way of saying thank you, our management has decided to give free reverse friend/favorites feature to all Fotolog members. Now, you can see who has added your Fotolog to their friend/favorite list.

The short: 2007 Sysadmin of the Year Nominations being accepted — http://www.sysadminoftheyear.com. Canada and US candidates only (due to prizes and regulations. )

Last year, I found out too late about the Sysadmin of the Year Award (see my lament at http://sheeri.net/archives/157). Mark Cohen, this year’s “poster boy” for 2007 Sysadmin of the Year, contacted me to let me know that the 2007 Sysadmin of the Year contest is on. It started on Sysadmin Day, always the last Friday in July.

I asked if DBA’s count as sysadmins, and here’s what Mark had to say:

In our book, DBAs qualify.

I’ve worked with some totally amazing DBAs that not only do their job, but ALSO work as a sysadmin when asked..

Great bunch of people generally.

The press release to Forbes …

What is Freedom?

The concept of free software is very old - even older than the idea about software itself, because this is not a technology -this is a view of life, human, simple, and natural. Because this is the idea and feeling of freedom. This unimpaired freedom with which we are born and which we carry with us in the course of our lives. This is the same freedom, which leads our feelings of humanity and justice.

The Internet is a child of this freedom. The free software is its manifestation. Regardless of its statute as an innermost human right,
freedom is constantly under the attack of politicians, organizations, companies or separate persons while they try to adapt it to their
morals and views. However, limited freedom is no freedom at all! The best way to protect this freedom is to share it with others. To make them remember that they carry this freedom within and that they can and have the …

China is becoming more and more important as a market for software; both proprietary and open source software. Still knowledge as to what is really taking place is quite limited with both language and cultural barriers making it difficult to understand for many westerners at least, to what is the Chinese opportunity for software developers and vendors globally.

Some good coverage in the last year from the blogspace can be found e.g. from especially Stephen Walli , but also from Amy Jiang of Canonical/Ubuntu , Zack Urlocher of MySQL and Matt Asay of Alfresco . However, this is …

You want to run the mysqlnd tests, because you never trust anybody else test results? In particular you are getting sceptical if anybody claims to have reached a certain level of stability? Read on, here’s a step-by-step for faking your own test results.

New tests …

PHP extensions can test their userland (PHP) functionality using so called “phpt Tests”. phpt Tests consist of several parts with their main part being regular PHP code to test PHP. On the website of the PHP Quality Assurance Team you can find a documentation of the phpt Tests syntax on the page Writing Tests, if your are interested in the details. Most extensions contain a tests/ subdirectory in the …

You want to run the mysqlnd tests, because you never trust anybody else test results? In particular you are getting sceptical if anybody claims to have reached a certain level of stability? Read on, here’s a step-by-step for faking your own test results.

New tests …

PHP extensions can test their userland (PHP) functionality using so called “phpt Tests”. phpt Tests consist of several parts with their main part being regular PHP code to test PHP. On the website of the PHP Quality Assurance Team you can find a documentation of the phpt Tests syntax on the page Writing Tests, if your are interested in the details. Most extensions contain a tests/ subdirectory in the …

MySQL AB today announced that BlueLithium, a leading online marketing company, is implementing a business-critical data warehouse application built upon MySQL and the BrightHouse database engine from Infobright Inc. MySQL AB and Infobright, a MySQL Certified Storage Engine partner, are expanding their relationship to jointly offer customers analytic data warehousing solutions.

If you've ever wished you could see MySQL's EXPLAIN output formatted as a tree, now you can. MySQL Visual Explain transforms EXPLAIN output into a hierarchical view of the query plan, which is significantly easier to read and understand.

A blog comment from Ian makes me wonder if I failed to state clearly what mysqlnd is. See below for his comment. Ian, I am thankful for your blog comment and question! Probably you are not the only reader who needs a little more background knowledge about mysqlnd. Please allow me to answer your question in public and in depth. FAQ: What is mysqlnd, do I need it?.

The acronym “mysqlnd” stands for “MySQL native driver for PHP”. This pretty much says nothing to most people, I guess.

• “native”: Is it written in PHP? No, that would be two slow. As you probably know, PHP itself is a program written in C. Therefore native means C and tightly integrated into PHP on the level of C. This is for sure a good thing as the driver can try to squeeze out the optimum of PHP. …