This is a description of a simple backup strategy for MySQL. At the time of this writing, we were using MySQL version 4.1.21 in a master-slave replication configuration, described in a previous article . The replication setup forms a basis for the backup strategy and makes backup very easy while providing 24/7 planned uptime on the master MySQL server.

For those who may not have believed it, the last two weeks we've seen proof that open source truly is a disruptive technology.  How is it disruptive?  It challenges the incumbents of closed source software, especially traditional enterprise infrastructure vendors.  That doesn't mean that closed source software is going away overnight, but the growth rates are slowing, license revenues are stagnant or declining and, most importantly, new applications are being built on open source. 

So not surprisingly, Oracle and now Microsoft, by their recent actions have proven that open source is disrupting their businesses.  Consider the following:

• Oracle announced they will fork Red Hat Linux, promoting a full stack
• …

Welcome to the 17th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly, human-edited review of news from the database blogosphere. There’s a lot to cover this week and not a moment to waste, so let’s begin. That 800-pound gorilla, Oracle Open World, has trundled back to its jungle home for another year, and a lot of bloggers [...]

Microsoft and Novell have announced a set of deals bunched together to create one of the most significant developments in the Linux versus Microsoft saga: technical collaboration, a so-called ‘intellectual property bridge’ (I-won’t-sue-you, you-won’t-sue me), and a joint support and services deal designed to counter the Oracle-Red Hat announcement of last week.

As this was breaking last night, our Open Source Practice Head Raven Zachary said, “Microsoft’s move to embrace Linux through an alliance with Novell is one of the most significant open source announcements to date. This announcement seems rushed, years in advance of what I expected from Microsoft, and clearly a response to Oracle’s announcement last week.”

First, the technical collaboration addresses three areas of threat by the open source world to Microsoft, to wit, server virtualization, web services management and open document formats. The companies will …

I already knew my way around the open source database scene when I started preliminary research for my diploma thesis last December. However writing this paper has been a great opportunity to dive into this topic really indepth, dispelling some misconceptions of my own along the way. Once I finished my last courses at university in March, I began to focus on this topic. Obviously I was still doing some open source and commercial development on the side during this time. So all in all I probably put in around 6 months of time in this.

On Wednesday I picked up the nicely bound copies of my 173 page diploma thesis. I dropped off at one copy of it at the university yesterday. So today I am releasing the paper to the public. The fancy title is as follows:
Synergies and Opportunities:
Open Source and Commercial Vendors
A study of the …

I’m halfway to restoring all the articles at VBMySQL.com. I’ve been able to clear up some typos and errors along the way while using the experience to come up with ideas for sessions at the next MySQL UC.

I’m thinking of a session to follow up my well-attended session on Managing Hierarchies in MySQL from last year’s conference, adding more breadth and depth to the session by covering multiple approaches to managing hierarchies and extended information on using stored procedures, views and partitioning to manage hierarchies.

What do you think? Did you attend the previous session? Would a three-hour tutorial be useful?

Jimi Hendrix once asked, "Are you experienced?" The new song, however, is "Are you assimilated?"

Assimilated into what? The Borg, of course. :-)

What is The Borg? It's the ever closing world of the large, proprietary ecosystems. Such ecosystems deliver a lot of value - greater integration between components, improved (theoretically) ease of use, etc. Microsoft has been the master of this, and Oracle is mounting the most formidable challenge to Microsoft (perhaps one reason for the Linux announcement, and clearly a reason for its announced …

I’ve been thinking a lot about Core Data recently. It supports SQLite out of the box, and its rather scalable and fast. Main reason being sqlite3 is included on every desktop and server of OS X that has shipped since 10.4 (Tiger).

It got me thinking about using MySQL as a data store. It will involve work, as Core Data itself is not extensible. And if written, will we have to embed MySQL into the application? What kind of problems will this pose? Licensing is the least of my worries, I’m thinking more from an application perspective.

I haven’t played with the Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) yet, but it allows custom SQL, and is available in WebObjects so its probably time to take a gander. Only real problem is its not in Core Data, thus not available in desktop applications. Then there’s …

Version 1.1.1 of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, a robust and
intelligent solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases is available
for download at Zmanda downloads page.

Changes since 1.1 release:
* FHS compliance (plugins are now in /usr/share/mysql-zrm directory)
* Bug fixes

ZRM for MySQL users manual is available in the wiki.

Please use bugzilla to report bugs in the release and product improvements.

Today I fixed a bug in our application that was interesting to figure out. Without a ton of detail, the gist is that if you convert a datetime to unix timestamp in MySQL:

mysql> select UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2006-10-28 04:00:00'); 
+---------------------------------------+
| UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2006-10-28 04:00:00') |
+---------------------------------------+
|                            1162022400 |
+---------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

And then add 24 hours to it:

mysql> select 1162022400 + (60*60*24);
+-------------------------+
| 1162022400 + (60*60*24) |
+-------------------------+
|              1162108800 |
+-------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

And then convert it back to a datetime it magically loses an hour:

mysql> select FROM_UNIXTIME('1162108800');
+-----------------------------+
| FROM_UNIXTIME('1162108800') |
+-----------------------------+
| 2006-10-29 03:00:00 …