I tend to use MySQL from the interactive command line shell quite a bit (SSH to your db server and type the command mysql to start). I noticed today that there is a pretty extensive built in help system in this command.

You can access it by typing help COMMAND, so for instance if you type help ALTER TABLE you get a quick reference for constructing an ALTER TABLE statement.

If you can't remember what command you want to use, then typing help contents is your friend. It will output:

For more information, type 'help item', where item is
one of the following categories:
Administration
Column Types
Data Definition
Data Manipulation
Functions
Geographic features
Transactions

So if your looking for that command that outputs all the columns in a table, but don't know what it's called, you might now try help administration …

I'm now back from EuroOSCON 2006 which was the reason I was not posting for a while. Pretty interesting event, even though it looks like it is getting less geeky compared to OSCON in US I visited two years ago - a lot of presentations now shifted to philosophical, political and business issues. I however do not know might be this is just Europe thing.

I gave a talk on High Performance FullText Search for Database Content which is now available for download from MySQL Performance Presentations page

We have plans to turn this presentation into article to publish here with some extra information and source code for all tests …

Yesterday three groups in the European Parliament (PES, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL) announced their motion for a resolution on patent policy. I published their press release earlier today on this Web site.

In parallel, the Independence/Democracy group in the European Parliament (commonly abbreviated as ID or IND/DEM) filed this motion for a resolution on patent policy. The motion was put forward by Tom Wise, an MEP from the UK Independence Party who spoke out in strong terms against the software patent directive.

The ID motion is materially consistent with the motion of PES, …

Nearly 100 days after the close of its JBoss acquisition, Red Hat is delivering the goods. Michael Tiemann said at OSCON that JBoss' business model was fine, but Red Hat would teach them how to really make bank with open source (my words, not his). It looks like the Red Hat model has found room for middleware siblings, as well.

As Peter Galli notes in his eWeek article:

The new Red Hat Application Stack subscription includes RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), JBoss AS (Application Server) and JBoss Hibernate, as well as support for the MySQL and PostgreSQL open-source databases.

New offerings also include JBoss subscriptions, such as JBoss AS, JBoss Hibernate and the various JEMS (JBoss Enterprise …

Three groups in the European Parliament (i.e., international-level parties) yesterday authorized me to distribute the press release below to my media contacts:

European patent controversy heating up again

PES, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups in European Parliament file motion for resolution — Proposal calls for “balance between the interests of patent holders and the broader public interest in innovation and competitive markets” — Commissioner McCreevy’s preference, the EPLA, is seen as weakening EU democracy, increasing litigation costs and “exposing SMEs to greater risks” ? McCreevy to speak in parliament next week, vote to take place in mid-October

Research Looks at How Open Source Software Gets Written, UC Davis (Press Release)

Eclipse Dominates Grassroots IDE Survey, Sets Tone for Open-Source Java, eWeek, Darryl Taft (Article)

Munich Begins to Switch Windows Out for Linux, CIO Tech Informer, John Blau (Blog)

What?s new with the LSB, Ian Murdock’s Web Log, Ian Murdock (Blog)

Deconstructing Databases, O’Reilly Radar, Dale Dougherty (Blog)

Teach your children about open. …

Twice recently I have had to import data from a flat file into a database — both sets of data were being imported to make better use of the data in the files. Importing a file is not that difficult using mysqlimport, particularly since in both cases the data was tab-delimited. I also could have used LOAD DATA INFILE.

The problem with mysqlimport and LOAD DATA INFILE is that you need to create the table beforehand. Often, though, I may not know the exact data types. Folks have written about PROCEDURE ANALYSE(), but they use it in the context of “you can check to see that your tables have the correct data types.”

David Medinets prepared this pictorial about setting up and running the PostgreSQL Virtual Appliance under VMWare Server.  In just a few pictures, you can see how easy and time efficient it is to be running PostgreSQL.
View: Configuring Virtual Appliance PostgreSQL Server

Solid Information Technology, which announced solidDB for MySQL in April, released the results of an open source survey yesterday (press release). Solid polled over 200 IT professionals on topics relating to open source adoption at the recent LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. The survey found that the greatest obstacles to developing and deploying an open source database strategy were reliability and high availability (but not the functional status quo?!). The press release includes some additional findings, which all seem to support Solid’s business model. I’d need to see the survey before making a determination as to whether it favored a point of view. Solid intends to repeat the survey at the upcoming LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in Cologne, Germany.

I've bought plane tickets to the upcoming MySQL Camp in November. This is looking like a very fun time, with lots of community members, MySQL employees, and Google developers attending. It's an "un-conference," which means there is no set schedule, and it's up to us to make out of the event whatever we wish it to be. If you've been reading my articles or using my tools, is there anything you'd like me to present on? I'd be happy to do it.