I’ve finally gotten around to adding the last little things that I wanted to do to version 2 of Statpack - my python script for aggregating SHOW [GLOBAL] STATUS output.

Now it connects to a running instance, and allows you to gather statistics from there to generate reports.

Here are the options it supports:

[markleith@medusa:~/Development/statpack/statpack-v2] $ ./statpack.py

Error: No arguments supplied
usage: ./statpack.py [list of arguments]

Non-interactive mode (aggregate txt files containing SHOW STATUS snapshots):

-f –files List of statistics files to aggregate (–files=stat1.txt[, stat2.txt..])
Argument must be first within list of arguments, on it’s own

Interactive mode (connect to running MySQL server for SHOW STATUS snapshots):

-h –host Host for MySQL server to connect to in interactive mode
…

Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a useful paper [PDF] on dual licensing in open source. It's a decent resource for helping developers and vendors figure out why, if, and how to dual license their software. (See here for a useful explanation of what dual licensing means, and Heather Meeker's piece is a must read for anyone interested in the legal ramifications of the practice.)

I found myself agreeing with much of the authors' conclusions, but not necessarily the tone or conclusion, because they seem to see dual licensing as a way to drive sales. Of course, it sometimes undoubtedly is - for some time a large percentage of MySQL's, Sleepycat's, db4o's, etc. sales were motivated by a proprietary …

After writing up my top 5 MySQL Wishes, and noticing Stewart did the same, I encouraged Mårten to offer his own. As is typical for Mårten, he responded very quickly. Of course, with typical Nordic humility, our CEO provided his answers with a disclaimer:

WARNING: I wrote these 5 wishes as a reflection of my thoughts, but I am afraid that they will mostly just demonstrate (as if it were needed) that I was hired to MySQL for entirely other tasks than figuring out what to do with our software. Enjoy it anyhow! 1. Pluggable Optimisers

Wouldn't it be great if just about anybody could write her/his own optimiser and plug it into MySQL?

Then we could have performance competitions where predefined applications on predefined …

Came across ask a SQL guru today. Service is run by the Microsoft DB MVP’s. You call them (via Skype), and they answer your query, via a video cast. Its quite new, hasn’t proven itself (I mean, why not just ask a forum?), and also offers itself as a video podcast. I’m thinking it can be useful for newer folk, especially if you like step-by-step instructions.

Going by how useful the Guru Bar at the MySQL Expo 2007 was, and how easy it is to make screencasts these days, I wonder if this would be something some guilds members would consider in addition to the wonderful podcast by Sheeri?

Technorati Tags: …

IBM and Red Hat achieve highest security certification with the US government. Novell ships new service pack for SUSE. MySQL spotlights Wikipedia growth. (and more)

IBM and Red Hat Achieve Highest Security Certification for Linux on IBM Servers, IBM / Red Hat (Press Release)

Novell Ships SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Service Pack 1 and New Virtual Machine Driver Pack, Novell (Press Release)

The Twelve Days of Scale-Out: Wikipedia Enjoys Phenomenal Growth Thanks to MySQL, MySQL AB (Press Release)

Hyperic …

In a decade, on-demand virtualized utility computing will be an invisible utility, part of the vital infrastructure of the technological economy.

People will mostly have forgotten what an enormous pain in the ass provisioning computation was today. Today, we don't truly feel that pain, because it seems "normal", everyone has to suffer it together.

The situation right now is, if you have a delivery van, you have to make your own gasoline. And you have to hire and pay for your own mechanics. Seems stupid, doesn't it? It's amazing that there are any delivery vans at all …

Think of the internet itself, what it did to telecoms.

Twenty-five years ago, if you wanted a high speed data connection to a computer in San Francisco, it was a pain. You'd have to come up with a pile of money, and wait a couple of months, at best. Hardware would be dedicated and provisioned, and then finally you would have your connection. To …

Here's an interesting problem to have.  What happens when your company starts scaling out in a matter of hours or days to traffic levels that would have normally taken years?  That's the situation that music site www.iLike.com (formerly GarageBand) faced after they launched May 23. They started getting tens of thousands of new users hourly through Facebook and eventually went from a million users to over 6 million in and the space of a few weeks, begging and borrowing more servers from VCs to keep things going.  They reached an audience size in weeks that it took Rhapsody years to achieve.  Now that's a fast pace of scale out!  They announced on June 11 that they are now the …

I’m going and stealing Jay’s idea (who stole it off Brian Duff… but his was for Oracle so obviously doesn’t count :)

So, my five wishes for MySQL Are:

5. Six-monthly release cycles

Getting a release out there takes way too long. There’s a variety of reasons, but seeing the amazing success of other free software projects taking the shorter release cycle, with each release not being too ambitious, I’m pretty convinced.

Although I think our increased use of pushbuild has helped immensely with the general quality of the tree, there’s a lot more that can be done…

4. Much more in depth …

An article in the Seattle Times was posted to MySQL's internal
business mailing list today:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003752014_brier18.html


"Within the next five hours we had another 30,000 users join and then we
started hitting the 10,000-users-an-hour pace, which was 10 times faster
than the first 10 hours," he said. "Then we realized we needed to start
rethinking things."


...


While the engineers rebuilt, the president and chief executive
"shucked" the
150 servers they rounded up - stripping boxes and hooking them up at the
data center.


Just to point this out, if they had built their technology around the
concept of deploying virtual servers, …

Not sure why you would want to but I've had several people ask me about VI emulation under Visual Studio.  Yes, Virginia, it exists.  Check it out here.  Will set you back $70 but if you really need it....