This is a post I've been thinking about for nearly a week.  It started about the same time I downloaded Safari for Windows.  I've never used Mac OS X for any extended period of time but I've tried to study how they develop their features.  Coming from the Windows camp, I can tell you that neither Tiger nor Leopard really does much of anything that Vista doesn't do.  And I'm not the only one thinking this either.  However, that really is not the point.  It doesn't matter how advanced a piece of software is; it only matters that the software does what the user expects and be easy to use.  Both the designers and developers at Microsoft need to reread that last sentence again.  Want some examples?

1) Take a look at this post …

Note: My views are just that: mine and not employer's
MySQL's new series The 12 Days of Scale Out received some very positive criticism from Jeremy Cole and Kevin Burton. MySQL was very quick to act on the opportunity and launch a section primarily targeted towards CIOs, a move that I applaud.

I wish a certain division to be made in the training courses as well where I felt that quite a lot of time is spent on giving marketing messages rather than provide meaty training. Don't take me wrong, there is stuff to be learned however the content has a lot of room for improvement.

The other thing that kind of surprised …

I prefer to use Integers for joins whenever possible and today I worked with client which used character keys, in my opinion without a big need. I told them this is suboptimal but was challenged with rightful question about the difference. I did not know so I decided to benchmark.

The results below are for MySQL 5.1.18 using MyISAM and Innodb tables. This time unlike other benchmarks I decided to do Join not on primary key and have query to read data for both tables. If the query would be index covering I would expect us to see different ratio. The query I use here is constructed to stress out join code while avoid sending data to the client Do not try to find any good meaning for query or schema. For joins which fetch just few rows difference is likely to be less as the join code itself is likely to be responsible for less portion of response time.

OK. Lets start with first simple MyISAM table and join query performed on INT …

I’ve recently received one database admin’s personal list of DRBD’s perceived limitations. While I’m certainly the last person to say that DRBD is limitation-free (hey, it’s software), I’d like to address these specifically — because really, in my humble opinion, most of them aren’t limitations at all.

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Weeks after Yahoo! CTO's resignation (or was he forced out :)), Yahoo! CEO quits. Unlike Google, Yahoo! turned to old media to lead the company. The results of course were way below par. Terry Semel was a controversial choice but one that at times, brought hope. At no time in Semel's tenure that hope seemed sustainable. Destruction of Overture, failed acquisitions like Web Jay and lack of effective strategy (yes Yahoo! Photos, yes Flickr!, no Yahoo! Photos).

Jerry Yang is himself stepping up to take charge. According to "The Google Story," this is exactly …

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....

When I first learned that having an AUTO-INC column causes a table lock in InnoDB, I was surprised. Since that day, I have been warning just about everyone regarding this.

In addition to the AUTO-INC table lock, there seem to be some other conditions where table lock is requested. I am saying this because on some of my InnoDB tables, I am seeing "tables in use 1, locked 1."

Do you know of any other conditions that can cause InnoDB to request a table lock? I have heard that using REPLACE or UNIQUE indexes on MySQL 4.1.X can cause this behavior.

If you know of any other situation where InnoDB will request a table lock, would you please leave a comment or email me (softwareengineer99 at Yahoo).

As I find information regarding this, I plan to document it here.

UPDATE:
MySQL Internals: Concurrent inserts …

I've actually been meaning to finish this blog entry for quite some time, and now finally had the chance. Recently, Brian Duff wrote an article entitled "If I Had 5 Oracle Wishes, They Would Be...". I thought the topic would be a good blog meme to start within the MySQL blogger community, so I'll go ahead and start it off for PlanetMySQL and see if anyone else chooses to pick up the topic and pass it on. So, here are my top 5 wishes for MySQL in the future...

The Modularization of a Core MySQL Server Kernel

Certainly, this particular idea isn't new at all. I discussed the concept with a number of people at the first MySQL Camp last November, and found some receptive ears. Additionally, I …

This weekend, Monty and I got together for a different kind of hacking session.

Instead of developing software, we were working on developing a set of rough principles and rules for running a Free Software/Open Source business. We both have a good amount of experience working with various FLOSS projects (like Mozilla, MySQL, PHP, etc.) and FLOSS companies (like eZ Systems, Mozilla, MySQL, Zend, etc.) and hope that we can put this experience to good use.

For me, this was a tremendous help - I’ve been putting off working on this for Foo Associates for some months now. It is much easier to work on meeting the needs of customers than it is to work on planning for the future.

The notes are still extremely rough, but both Monty and I want to post them so that people can discuss. Also, …

I’ll be attending the Openmind conference from October 2nd to 3rd and will be giving a keynote at the event.

Openmind is being organized by COSS, an interesting Finnish Free Software and Open Source development agency that helps Finnish and Scandinavian businesses and projects use and develop FLOSS.

Other keynote presenters at the event (that readers of this blog may know) include Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, Aleksander Farstad, CEO of eZ Systems AS and FLOSS researcher Rishab Aiyer Gosh.

I also hoping that since Monty is in the area, he will also be able to attend.

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