Last week I was notified that my article about how to install and configure MySQL and the MySQL Connector/J was published in the Java Starter Magazine, a special edition of the german Java Magazin. It covers the basic installation of MySQL and Connector/J on Windows and Linux and how to write a small example program to connect to to MySQL with Java using the Eclipse framework. They were kind enough to send me a number of copies that I plan to give away at tonight's Hamburg MySQL User Group Meeting.

For those that are using a Referential Integrity based Storage Engine in MySQL, the use of Foreign Keys can provide an extra level of data integrity within your application. There are of course caveats to this statement, such as correct design, proper transactional use etc, but that’s a topic for another time. The use of CASCADE has an effect on this.

So, just a quick refresher, using the MySQL Sakila Sample Database (if you don’t have it, get it. This can be a valuable tool in many other areas). Let’s first check out the Schema Diagram. We will …

I’ve yet to find any Java project that doesn’t have dependancies on some other Open Source external libraries. I’ve yet to find a Java project that manages these external dependencies appropiately for support and integration at an enterprise level.

As with most projects, understanding an applying sound principles that scale will help you at a later date, and generally the cost of implementation is minimual at the start, but of course becomes more expensive when it’s really needed. The classic case is Version Control. For over 10 years, even on small single developer projects, I’ve used Version Control, it should be taught at university as an introduction to good programming design, it would greatly benefit software development and maintenance.

Back onto the topic of hand. Let’s use a moderate Java Web Based application, and for the purposes of this discussion the following Open Source external libraries are incoporated. …

In my previous blog article, I mentioned the fact that Red Hat’s deputy general counsel, Mark Webbink, lobbied in the European Parliament on July 5, 2005 (the day before the EP’s decisive vote to reject the software patent bill) to keep the software patent directive alive.

I had not anticipated the kind of Internet debate that this statement would trigger, including some insulting emails that were sent to me, and least of all I would have expected Mark Webbink to call into question the “veracity of [my] statements”, which is what he did in the discussion below this LWN.net article. He knows exactly what he did.

The word “motivations” also appears in that posting. It’s really simple: on the occasion of a patent suit having been filed against Red Hat, I thought it …

linux.conf.au is one of the best technical Open Source conferences on the planet (not just Linux). Speakers such as Andrew Tridgell, Alan Cox, Eben Moglen and Van Jacobson are there. Even Linus sometimes shows up. But apart from those famous faces, there are so many excellent people there every year - it's fantastic. Plenty of time to talk, discuss new ideas... it rocks.

The conference travels around Australia and New Zealand, coming year the event will be at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, January 15th-20th, 2007

Members of the Linux and open-source community (that's all of you!) are now invited to submit papers and proposals for presentations, tutorials and miniconfs.

Key dates:

• Submission deadline: September 1, 2006
  
• Notifications by …

Last week I scribled some thoughts on presentation slides, and got some very good comments. Thanks!
One comment referred to Guy Kawasaki and something he wrote blogged last year: The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint:a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.
He also writes:As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a "patent pending," "first mover advantage," "all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product" startup. These pitches are so lousy that I'm losing my hearing, there's a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning.I'm not a …

MySQL and InnoDB expose lots of information about their internals, but it's hard to gather it all into one place and make sense of it. I've written a tool to do that, and you are free to download and use it. This article introduces innotop, a powerful text-mode MySQL and InnoDB monitoring tool. It has lots of features, is fast and configurable, and it's easy to use.

Just as a reminder that the MySQL meetup will be happening this Monday at the Elysian.

Directions to the Elysian can be found at:
http://www.elysianbrewing.com/Elysian.html

Our normal range of topics will be covered... aka we talk about MySQL for about half the evening, and then we spend the rest of the evening geeking about other Lamp projects and who has tricked out their MythTV in the last month :)

MySQL and InnoDB expose lots of information about their internals, but it’s hard to gather it all into one place and make sense of it. I’ve written a tool to do that, and you are free to download and use it. This article introduces innotop, a powerful text-mode MySQL and InnoDB monitoring tool. It has lots of features, is fast and configurable, and it’s easy to use. Note: VividCortex is the startup I founded in 2012.

This week, and specifically today, marks a minor milestone in my employment at MySQL?I?m finally a full time employee, no longer on probation. It has also been probably the busiest week since I started at MySQL, except for the week spent at the developers? conference in Sorrento.

Why so busy?

Because I?ve spent many hours deep in the build process that actually generates the documentation, partly to address some existing errors, but also to improve the documentation after some new content was added. In summary, the following major steps were made this week:

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