There's a new blog in town by MySQL consulting guru Nitin Borwankar.  Nitin's working on a few super secret startups and invariably they are using a lot of open source technology to create sophisticated tagging systems that create "folksonomies" or tagging systems that are developed in a collaborative fashion.  Sounds easy, but how do you map that in and out of standard MySQL?  Ahh... that's the question.  And Nitin has some practical answers borrowing from data warehousing techniques that help illuminate the way.  You may not always agree with how Nitin's does it, but its thought provoking …

Vim 7.0 introduces tabs to Vim. I wasn’t aware of this until BigE pointed it out to me, and to this tip; that lets you move around the tabs with firefox style short-cuts for tab navigation. That’s a great tip, but what about us OS X users who prefer using the “apple/command” key? I decided to use Safari style tab navigation for vim, as some of the would have caused problems with default keybindings. You can see the details here.. For people wondering how to get Vim 7.0 for their Macs, MacVim.org is your best bet.

Tags: php, vim, mysql, …

The VMWare Server allows to do great things that you usually wouldn't like to do on your working machines, mostly because of the danger to damage something that can take a lot of time to recover. And it's also a great thing to play with advanced MySQL issues.

So I installed myself a "MySQL playground" - a VMWare machine running SuSE Linux 10.1 - and installed three MySQL 5.1.11 servers (placed in different directories and assigned the ports 3306, 3307 and 3308). The first thing that I played with was to set up a multimaster replication example, based on Giuseppe Maxia's article: Advanced MySQL Replication Techniques (I planned to do this for quite a while and now I finally did it!).

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I did a bunch of housekeeping in the MySQL Cluster documentation today.

Confession: I’m the bright light who came up with the term “SQL node” because I didn’t like “API node”. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, but as time has gone on, I’ve come to see the error of my ways. However, lots of people now use the term, so I guess it’s not a good idea to change it out from under them. So here’s what I’ve decided:

API node - Any application that accesses Cluster data. Basically this means any NDB API application.

SQL node - A subspecies of API node that provides an SQL interface to a Cluster. Basically, this means a MySQL Server that’s part of a Cluster. (mysqld itself isn’t an NDB API application, but the bits that let it talk to a Cluster use the NDB API.)

Also, ndbd processes were in the distant past referred referred …

If you want to play with the next generation of ADO.NET, now's your chance.  The ADO.Net team has released the August CTP for download.

The bits are young and fresh but they give you an idea of where Microsoft is heading.  I can't commit to a timeframe, but we are working on the next generation of our .NET provider which will be compatible with vNext.

Note: The May LINQ CTP is a pre-requisite.

If you've spent more than a few years in the programming or technology business, sometimes it takes a bit of a refresher course to take you back to that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from accomplishing your first programming "miracle". Yesterday, I happened to give that refresher course to myself while walking my twin brother, Andrew, through the first steps of setting up a MySQL database and creating a simple PHP page which displayed the contents of a table. I tell you, when I heard my brother say for the first time, "Wow, that's really cool!", it took me back about ten years to that "lightbulb-going-on" moment when I created my first Symantec Q&A database application on a 386 machine in a warehouse at United Parcel Service.

That feeling, you know, the one of "holy crap, I just made the computer do something!" It's a pretty great feeling, as I'm sure anyone reading this will attest. It's a feeling of simultaneous bewilderment …

Since OSCON, most of my time has been focused on editing a book, which is about to be finished. As I’m getting my commutes back, I have been reading up on what I’ve missed on Planet MySQL (which I affectionately call “The ‘planet.”

Y’all are prolific!

Jeremy’s On Open Source Citizenship got me thinking about the whole movement. I think there’s still a place for proprietary software in the world, as much as folks tout that “open source is ALWAYS better, because more people see it, therefore more people can help change it.”

Whenever anyone suggests a monolithic solution, I cringe. This all ties into the patent issues that are strongly debated these days. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about everything.

Jeremy’s article talked about how Yahoo! (as an example) couldn’t just open up all the source, …

Hey, looks like someone decided to give a spin to the old MySQLCC (aka Mysql control center) , see Sourceforge project page by releasing version 0.9.7.

Last Saturday was the 25th anniversary of the IBM PC.  For those who were into computers back then, this was a huge legitimization of the microcomputer.  Until that point, there was no big vendor involved.  The Apple ][ was successful and spawned the first "killer app" with Visicalc, and there were lots of hobbyist machines running CP/M or weirdo home grown operating systems.  But it wasn't until IBM's entry into the market that things really took off.  Don Estridge, led a team from Boca Raton to develop IBM's entry into the microcomputer market with a charter to go outside and use industry standard components, rather than work within IBM's own bureaucracy.  The result was faster …

Let us recap the successful open source business models thus far:

1) Sell stuff around Open Source. O'Reilly is the obvious winner in this arena. Their books and conferences go hand in hand with the open source community.

2) Support. IBM Global Services does an amazing job at this. Do you have something built on an Open Source stack that you need supported? They support most anything. Look at HP's announcements as of late and you can see that they are quickly trying to move into this area.

3) Update Services. Ask those who buy Redhat Network what the value is in the model and they will tell you that it is in updates. There is minimal monitoring built into Redhat Network, but the real value is in the updates.

4) Dual License. Give away the software and for those who can not use the software under an open source license, sell them a commercial license. This is the …