The Certified MySQL Associate certification that we’ve mentioned a few times by now will be available in all Pearson VUE testing centers as of Wednesday, July 18 2007.

Yay!

It’s not an exam that will impress hard-core DBAs with years of experience, but I actually expect quite a lot of this certification. The Developer and DBA certifications are pretty tough, and in many cases go beyond what you need, at least for an entry-level position. With the Associate certification, you get good proof that you know the basics of MySQL without straining yourself or your wallet.

The exam has 50 questions, and lasts for one hour. It’s also somewhat less expensive than the other exams. Unlike other MySQL certifications, the Associate exam does not carry a version number and is regarded as perpetually valid once you have obtained it (we do, however, …

Many times you need to produce XML output from your MySql database. MySql has no built-in support for creating XML in it's SQL implementation but you can easily add support using the stored function feature.

To make xml output easier I have made three small stored SQL functions. They produce xml fragments, which you can easily put together to get a complete xml:

xml_escape(value) replace characters not allowed in xml with the escape sequences
xml_attr(name, value) create an xml attribute
xml_tag(tagname, tagvalue, attrs, subtags) create a tag, optionally with


Lets see some examples. First a real simple one:

select xml_tag('table',table_name,null,null)
from information_schema.tables
where table_schema = 'INFORMATION_SCHEMA'

Gives you something like:

<table>CHARACTER_SETS</table>
…

MySQL, like most software companies, has a complex organization to deal with the creation and improvement of its products.
There is a well oiled machinery that evaluates the needs and decides where to invest resources to create new products or to expand or change existing ones.
Ultimately, what affects the decision is the users satisfaction.
However, funnily as it may sound, the best organized activity in our company is bugs processing i.e. the one dealing with users dissatisfaction.
I would like to see more positive input from the users, and thus I put together the guidelines for a Usability Report.
What is is?
In short, it is the account of a user first impression with a product or a feature. If you decide today to start testing, say, …

Today I’ve started moving (actually copying) all information I have about MMM to the project’s wiki.

If someone is interested in adding some information there or modifying my descriptions (yes, I know about by awful English and I hope someone will fix my mistakes), ping me (contacts are here) and I’ll add you to the project members list.

Thanks all for participation and support.

A little while ago now, I did some tech reviewing of a book called Backup & Recovery… specifically MySQL related things (and MySQL Cluster). Curtis was kind enough to send me a copy of the book as well - and I’ve been reading the rest of it bits at a time since I got it.

I’m rather impressed… it gives a good mix of overview and digging deeper on just about every way to back up and recover systems. It also discusses several products that I didn’t know about (and have partly investigated now because of it).

It also has good sections on process: as in how to decide what to backup, encouraging the use of checklists and all that. Heck… recently when doing a restore I realised I never backed up /boot (annoying, not catastrophic… as I know my way …

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Episode 18: De-Myth-tifying Indexes

Where I have been:
Wedding video (short) and photos:
http://www.sheeri.com/wedding

Honeymoon (and wedding) photos:
http://www.sheeri.com/photos

News:
FREE training for Oracle DBAs who want to learn MySQL
…

?Linking FileMaker Pro 9 solutions to the open source strengths of MySQL will greatly empower the developer and user communities of both product lines,? said Zack Urlocker, MySQL AB's executive vice president of products.

Hard drives are noisy, eat electric, getting slower, and might go the way of the Doo-Doo.

About four years ago I found a PCI card that had 256megs of memory on it, and a battery that let it last 48 hours with no power to the computer.

Innodb log files! Yes, put the log files on it and watch the performance go up. It was a neat hack but for $800 a card it wasn't all that practical. The performance was nice, but it wasn't worth the
additional investment per machine for the card.

A number of months ago Jeremy Cole blogged about some solid state cards he was looking at. At around the same time I noticed and commented on "IDE" solid state drives coming to market.

Dinner on Tuesday night with Kevin Burton pushed this into my mind again. What was he looking at going with for his data …

Red Hat releases new version of JBoss. Linspire offers Open XML translator. FSF posts GPLv3 launch transcript. (and more)

Red Hat Delivers JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2, Red Hat (Press Release)

Open XML Translator Now Available To Freespire & Linspire Users, Linspire (Press Release)

OrangeHRM Launches version 2.2 of the Open-Source HR Management System, OrangHRM (Press Release)

Zimbra Helps Organizations Meet Compliance Requirements with Robust Archiving and Ajax-based Discovery Solution, Zimbra (Press Release)

…

Did you notice that there is a new component among MySQL products? No? Perhaps you have been on vacation, then.
MySQL Proxy is an exciting tool for anyone willing to get new features now without waiting for new server major releases.
Using the Proxy you can filter queries, create new commands, create customized logs, play with the operating system from any database client, and much more.
Interested? Read Getting started with MySQL Proxy