There's an interesting discussion going on over at DBAZine and SSWUG.org about building a code of ethics for DBAs. Of course they are looking for folks to participate in the formation of such a document. If you haven't been over to either of those places they tend to focus on Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 but are expanding to include open source databases. The SSWUG about page even mentions MySQL.

I first caught sight of this movement in a post by Craig Mullins a few months back. Just last week Craig posted an update on the happenings with a call to get involved. …

At the MySQL Users Conference, I mentioned that I had a stored function for computing distance in miles/kilometers/etc. from latitude and longitude. Some people have asked me for it, so here you go.

First, a general function for computing great circle distance from the radius of the great circle, and latitude/longitude for each point:

DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS gc_dist;
CREATE FUNCTION gc_dist (
  radius DOUBLE,
  A_lat DOUBLE,
  A_lon DOUBLE,
  B_lat DOUBLE,
  B_lon DOUBLE
) RETURNS DOUBLE
RETURN (2 * radius * ATAN2(SQRT(@x := (POW(SIN((RADIANS(A_lat)-RADIANS(B_lat)) /
 2), 2) + COS(RADIANS(B_lat)) * COS(RADIANS(A_lat)) * POW(SIN((RADIANS(A_lon) -
RADIANS(B_lon)) / 2), 2))), SQRT(1 - @x)));

Next, we can use gc_dist() to compute the distance in miles—on Earth—by passing in the radius of …

On top of everything else I saw at the MySQL UC, I saw enough snazzy digital SLRs to make me green with envy (curse you Stewart, Mike, George, Colin, Jeremy and Julian!)

So, I decided to whip up a way out-there camera wishlist to rule them all! I may not actually have any of this, but when some generous millionaire buys it all for me I shall have the mightiest setup of all at the next uc!

Ok so it is just an excuse to play with the wishlist plugin for wordpress.

By tim

For my talk at the MySQL User Conference, Roger Magoulas, the director of O'Reilly's research group, put together a few slides about the state of the database job market, with a focus on MySQL. The data comes from analysis of job postings from all of the online job sites, which we receive as part of a data sharing arrangement with SimplyHired. (Just as we do with the computer book market, we've built a data warehouse for technical job data and trends, which helps to put some "hard numbers" into the O'Reilly Radar.)

The image below links to the slides (in flash format - click on each image to go to the next), which show the relative popularity of various databases in online job postings, as well as some very …

Ok I admit it, I was chatting up the nice AirCanada lady at the check-in counter. Consequentially, she forgot to give me the luggage tag for my suitcase. Travelling from Canada to the US, you first check in (but don't drop off your checked luggage), then actually go through US immigration "Welcome to the USA", and then you drop off your luggage. Just as I was trying to extract practical and solution-focused assistance from the person there, the AirCanada lady came running through with my luggage tag. Now there's friendly service.

The US visa waiver form still has the same typo I spotted a few years back, even though it's a newer version... in the text about the time required to fill out the form, they talk about something like "5 minutes total for an average of 6 minutes per question". I presume they mean "6 seconds". I'd gladly report this bug, however, the elaborate contact details (not a website) are on the part of the form …

I know, there have been some problems with db4free.net during the week that I attended the MySQL Users Conference. Unfortunately, I didn't have a laptop with me and had no access to the Internet most of the time. I could find out on Tuesday (thanks to Sheeri who borrowed me her laptop!) that the MySQL 5.0 server was down and managed to start it up again. When I returned home Saturday evening, the MySQL 5.0 server was down again. Strangely enough, the MySQL 5.1.10 server which was built from the development source, seemed to work great all week long.

Today I have updated the MySQL 5.0 server to 5.0.21 and installed the lately released MySQL 5.1.9 server instead of the 5.1.10 development snapshot. I hope that the problems are solved now, but I'm back online now to keep an eye on the …

Thanks to everyone who's been involved in rewarding me with the MySQL Community Award "Writer of the Year 2006" and congratulations to my co-winners Giuseppe Maxia, Roland Bouman and Rasmus Lerdorf!

Here's that great prize (sorry for the quality and all the shades - I'm not a good photographer):



So many people have Oscars, Grammies and things like that on their chimneys - but how many have such a great trophy ;-)?

I've added another free article to my growing collection:

• Guru Speak: Storing Sessions in a Database

This article creates the necessary functions in steps, so that you hopefully better understand the final product and can make your own modifications to better suit your needs. If you're just interested in the code, you can look in the code repository for Essential PHP Security:

• Store Session Data in a MySQL Database

You might also be interested in Trick-Out Your Session Handler, an article by …

Hey, this was an incredible week and it's hard to believe that it's over! Sorry that you didn't hear or read from me during this week (except of course the people who attended the Conference), but I was (with a few exceptions, thanks to Sheeri and Roland) offline this week and could not post any new articles in that time.

Every individual day was absolutely incredible. The trip was alright, it was my first big journey alone and I was concerned about many things that could possibly go wrong - from how to find my way through the airports (my route was Vienna - London - San Francisco), or since I rented a car, driving in a different country with some different rules and things like that. But it all worked very smoothly and there were no such problems at all ... and I gained a lot of new experiences about travelling. The flights …

Coming away from the MySQL Users Conference I have a short list of questions and/or ideas to research over the next few weeks.

The first is a question posed by an individual after the session on backups. She had been told that mysqldump works good for small installations but once you get above a gigabyte of data it can't handle the dump or restore process.

I've been using mysqlhotcopy for a few years now, but before that was using mysqldump on a few fairly large databases. At the time we switched over to mysqlhotcopy I think our system was around 20 gigs of data, and although the backup/restore process took a good chunk of …