Most web applications use something like five languages. One of these is a big programming language, like Java or PHP, running on a server, and the other four are HTML, CSS, Javascript, and SQL.

SQL and HTML are "declarative": they let you state what you want, and the browser (for HTML) or database (for SQL) has to decide how to cook it up for you. This makes them easy languages for people to grasp; it also ensures that the browser and database server will be exceptionally large and complex pieces of software. (And apparently programmers are never really satisfied with declarative languages, so database servers grew stored procedures and browsers got Javascript.) CSS is a "little language," a vocabulary for design, more lexicon than grammar. Over the last ten years, a lot of presentation code has moved out of HTML into CSS, while today's HTML is full of DOM signposts ("id" attributes and "div" tags) that didn't used to be there. …

Hey, look! Peter mentioned me in his presentation at the UC this year.

UC2006-MySQL-Performance-Landscape.pdf

I let him use the Sunfire T2000 I borrowed from Sun (which I should return today) to generate some statistics for the talk.

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dave rosenberg has been doing a series of ?how i work? interviews and asked for more submissions. here is mine.

what is your role? i believe my title is still maintenance engineer, but i?m now actually a proper server developer at mysql. right now i?m doing some falcon-related work, but i hope to get back to working on pluggable authentication and authorization soon.

what is your computer setup? my desktop is a mac mini (powerpc), hooked up to a 20" apple cinema display. my development box, which runs headless and i just access with ssh, is an amd64 running ubuntu. i also have a 12" powerbook that i …

I figure I might as well maintain my status as Resident Inquisitor of Open Source Myths with a discussion on the value of choice. A friend at a Fortune 500 company recently set me to thinking on the problems (and opportunities) that open source affords vis-a-vis choice. (I've opined on open source choice before, in case you're interested.)

I'm very fond of telling enterprises that open source maximizes their choice. I often use one of Larry's graphics to illustrate how much better off they are:

Look at all that choice the CIO now has! She can spend her money in a variety of different ways.

Oddly enough, that can be a problem. In many ways, it's easier to be forced into a decision: if I only have $10 to spend, in some ways I'm glad to have $9.95 in Arsenal tickets staring at me. My choice is made. No need to worry …

Edit: apparently as I was writing this, Dave put out the call for others to write their own. So, I *have* been asked….

I find Dave Rosenberg’s “How I Work” series fascinating, so I thought I would post how I work, and some tips I’ve picked up along the way.

I enjoyed How Brian Aker Works the best, mostly because some of the ideas were new and fresh to me — for example, polling e-mail every 30 minutes (and thinking about moving to once every hour).

Now, most people I know would say “But I MUST respond to e-mail, the faster the better!” To that I say, “What if you were in a meeting?” Most people will call if they want an immediate answer, and if you’re truly in a meeting, they’ll leave a voicemail …

What is your role?
I'm the Open Source Editorial Director for Apress. I spend my days helping authors create great books, talking tech with some of the brightest guys in the computing industry, and travelling to various technical conferences around the country. I'm also the author of several books, and regularly contribute to various publications such as TechTarget's SearchOpenSource.com. My leisure time is spent working on various development projects and slowly remodeling my home.

What is your computer setup?
I use two laptops, one Windows XP and the second running Ubuntu. When working from my home office, I use dual monitors, the second being a 17" flat-panel Samsung. Using dual monitors is by far one of the greatest productivity gains I've ever encountered.

What desktop software applications do you use daily?
The vast majority of my time is spent …

I'm very excited to announce that OmniTI has acquired Brain Bulb, which basically means that I'm now a principal of OmniTI and get to work with some of the smartest and friendliest people around, such as George, Theo, Wez, Laura, and Amy.

While traveling recently, I read an article entitled "The Best Company to Work for in the World - Period." I saved this article and was showing it to Wez last week. His first reaction was, "Oh, is that an article about OmniTI?" After only a few short weeks, I already share this sentiment. The combination of working with super smart people …

I'll be giving a talk about MySQL Cluster at FrOSCon 2006, http://www.froscon.de, on Saturday 24th of June. It's going to be an Introduction focusing on MySQL 5.0 and new features in 5.1.

MySQL AB has 3 talks there. My colleague Lenz will do the other two about Administrating MySQL and the MySQL Business Model.

Here is the schedule: http://programm.froscon.de/.

A bug titled DELETE FROM inconsistency for NDB (Bug#19066) dropped into my lap, and while fixing it, we had to make some hard decisions on what should be considered the "correct" way to solve this.

The bug is related to the difference between TRUNCATE TABLE and DELETE FROM with no WHERE clause. On the surface, they seem to be equivalent, but when digging deeper, we will see that there is big difference between the statement when replication comes into play.

Before delving into the problem and the solution, I'll start by recapitulate some selected parts of the manual.

• The TRUNCATE TABLE and DELETE FROM with no condition are "logically equivalent": TRUNCATE TABLE empties a table completely. Logically, this is equivalent to a DELETE statement that …

I've spoken with all of the participants in our "How I Work" series and we're all having the same reaction. Not only is it cool to see how our peers do things, but you can actually put this stuff into practice. After reading Brian Akers' profile, I immediately started using OmniOutliner for my todo list. Now if only I could somehow sync it to a web interface...

All of us were surprised how many others use Macs and Treos. In fact, it seems that those who use Macs use Treos and those who use Windows lean towards BlackBerry. To that end, none of us have gotten a damn thing for free from either company. One of my Bschool chums works for Palm and thinks he can pry a 700p out of their coffers using the family discount, but not for free. I still can't believe Cingular and RIM haven't hit us up to test drive the 8700, which Peter was raving about and has made me rethink my Palm choice.

Anyway, if you want to do your "How I work" just follow …