By tim

In this installment, I'll look at specific technology trends as demonstrated by book sales. First off, here's another view of our computer book treemap, this time tweaked a bit to show the hierarchical organization of the category database. As before, click on the image to pop up a larger version.

As you can see, the treemap no longer looks like Iowa from the air, with each category like a farm field of a different size, and its relative health shown by its color. Instead, you can see that the treemap is actually a structure of boxes within boxes, showing the hierarchical organization of the data mart. We've organized the data into six "super-categories" -- Systems and Programming, Web Design and Development, Business Applications, Digital Media Applications, Consumer Operating Systems and Devices, and Other. Within each …

It's probably a nobrainer, but as this is the first time I'm running into this problem, I decided I'd write it down.

I nearly ran out of diskspace on the C: disk of my notebook (running windows there). You now how it goes: I knew I did not have too much space left, but that little...It just couldn't be true. So, I ran a little Windows Wizard to clean up temporary files and such, and the next thing that happened:

ERROR 126 (HY000): Incorrect key file for table 'C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\#sql_474_0.MYI'; try to repair it

Whoamm! The mysql client utility quit running my query. Seems like a temporary table got cleaned up too...
(I'm running an insane query for experimentation purposes).

The good news was that my disk space problems were indeed instantly solved.

Of course, I'm a little bit surprised that it would be possible for windows to throw away …

As predicted, the most popular tutorials at the MySQL Users Conference 2006 are selling out:

• MySQL Cluster Configuration, Tuning, and Maintenance
  
• MySQL Performance Optimization
  
• Replication for Scaling and High Availability
  
• Certification Primer: MySQL 5.0 DBA I

Luckily, we can do some magic and have a few "double rooms" similar to last year. So, you might still get in.... see also the …

I think the marathon is a good metaphor for software development. Not in the sense of an enduring hardship (though that's often true), but in the sense that both represent very tough, but ultimately achievable goals. The analogy is not perfect though; in particular running a marathon is a solitary effort whereas software development usually is not.

I've run ten marathons in as many years, including Boston Marathon this past Easter monday.  My first marathon was ten years ago, when I was working at Borland on Delphi.  That was a tough project, but ultimately very successful.  Delphi went on to generate around half a billion dollars in revenue and is still in use …

Everybody has been writing lately of their likes of sessions and events for the MySQL User Conference, time for my 2 cents worth, with a twist.

I’ll be leaving early tomorrow at 7am (Friday my time), that’s Thursday 2pm Conference time. A taxi, two trains, two planes, and some 21 hours later, I’ll be at San Jose. In time to get a car and head to Davis California, a small town, where I have lived previously. After some catchup, I’m off to Lake Tahoe, (all up about 3 hrs from San Jose), for some R & R, and a weekend of Skiing, starting at Heavenly. No snow in the last few days, but 4 feet in the past week, and a bumper season to date. (The added benefit is it’s much cooler, I’m not a warm weather person, and my current home in Brisbane Australia is just too warm for my liking)

A lazy Sunday afternoon drive back, …

Lukas Smith wrote an interesting blog entry yesterday on his thoughts about the pluggable storage engine API released in MySQL 5.1. Although I did make a comment on the entry, I wanted to elaborate on what the pluggable storage engine layer in MySQL is all about, and what it isn't.

The pluggable storage engine API builds upon the foundation of the modular table handler architecture which allows different table handlers (now known as storage engines) to facilitate the reading and writing of data to and from a storage medium. The reason I say storage medium, and not disk, is that the handler mechanism was designed so that engines could be created that specifically handled the storage and retrieval of data to anything, not just a …

Long time no speak! Hey non-avid readers!

I’ve been keeping my head down lately working away in our support group, and haven’t had much time to get any tips down on my blog or even any thoughts in general.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been polishing up my presentation - MySQL for Oracle DBAs, which is on the last day - next Thursday, April 27th.

http://www.mysqluc.com/cs/mysqluc2006/view/e_sess/8465

If you’re reading this - and around at our user conference next week - seek me out and say “Hi!”.

I’ll work on a number of blog posts after the conference, which will give some of the information available in my presentation as well.

Look forward to saying “Hi!” to as many of you as possible!

Dear MySQL users, MaxDB users and friends,

we have two news for you. The bad one: no MaxDB series posting this week. The good one: german language MaxDB web seminar tomorrow!

My last week has been dominated by preparing the upcoming MaxDB web seminar on MaxDB performance tuning. The web seminar will be held in german tomorrow Thursday, 21.04.2006 at 10 CEST (MEZ). You can still register for the seminar at http://www.mysql.de/news-and-events/web-seminars/maxdb-performance.php. Don’t expect too much from the 45-minute talk. In 45-minutes one can’t do much more than talk about the very basics and try to give you an overview on the topic. Due to the web seminar and other duties we did not make it to write the next MaxDB series posting on transactions.

We have more good news for you. My co-worker C.J. Collier is …