BusinessWeek Online has a Tech Special Report on Open Source that includes several articles on Linux, software patents and the database market. The series includes some interesting observations on the prevalance of Linux and the LAMP stack to web applications, the emergence of open source in embedded systems such as Tivo, LinkSys routers, cars, phones and even Zimbra's open source mail system.  Linux may not be as prevalent on the desktop, but it continues to make inroads in a broad range of systems and devices.

Sarah Lacey's coverage of what she calls the latest round of the "Database Wars"  is insightful and she nails the key reason why CIOs are looking at open source …

MaxDB is in the Press again. The SAP customer magazine SAP INFO has published the second part of a MaxDB article today. The article MaxDB in hosting environments: Secure Operation for Users and Developers is a follow-up on MaxDB reduces total cost of ownership: High Professionalism, Low Operating Costs, published in the last issue of the magazine. Both articles demonstrate how to save money and lower TCO using MaxDBs unique technical solutions for todays enterprise requirements.

Developers …

MaxDB is in the Press again. The SAP customer magazine SAP INFO has published the second part of a MaxDB article today. The article MaxDB in hosting environments: Secure Operation for Users and Developers is a follow-up on MaxDB reduces total cost of ownership: High Professionalism, Low Operating Costs, published in the last issue of the magazine. Both articles demonstrate how to save money and lower TCO using MaxDBs unique technical solutions for todays enterprise requirements.

Developers …

Let me give you another great example that demonstrates the power of information_schema.

Assume that we create two tables which are combined by a foreign key constraint:

mysql> CREATE TABLE tt1 (
    ->   id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    ->   val INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL) ENGINE=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)


mysql> CREATE TABLE tt2 (
    ->   id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    ->   id_1 INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
    ->   val INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
    ->   FOREIGN KEY (id_1) REFERENCES tt1(id)) ENGINE=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

What if you want to know if there are any tables that reference on table tt1 and which ones they are? Well, you could try to delete the table and you'll get an error message telling you the foreign key constraints, if there are some. But …

Nürtingen, Germany - KarstadtQuelle AG's e-commerce subsidiary neckermann.de has replaced its legacy database system with MySQL Cluster. When neckermann.de began planning a new platform for the session data for its online store, the company's focus was on lowering operating costs and increasing flexibility. The German e-retailer found what it was looking for in the combination of MySQL Cluster running on Linux and commodity Intel-based blade server hardware. When it came time to implement the new solution, neckermann.de employed MySQL AB's professional service organization to provide assistance in integrating MySQL Cluster into their application, including helping tune and optimize performance.

The EC has started another round of consultations that appear to be aimed at renewing the effort to establish software patents in Europe.

Opposition from a ragtag coalition of Open Source companies, professional lobbyists, Free Culture, Free Information and Free Software groups helped sink the software patent directive in 2005, but it seems that the software patent lobby is nothing if not

One reason that I'm an Apple fan is that the customer support has almost uniformly been exceptional (as was IBM's when I used to use ThinkPads). When I call Apple technical support I almost never wait on hold, always get someone who actually uses a Mac and can answer my questions, and get a fast turnaround on any repairs that are needed.

Except this time. My laptop has been stuck in technical support limbo since I called Apple on January 21. My PowerBook sat, as near as I can tell, at Apple for days before they formally began to work on it, and now they've ordered a part and I've been waiting for that to come in. I'm not happy (nor is my wife, as I'm using her PowerBook in the interim).

The experience reminded me of a recent technical support experience where I was on the delivery side. We bumped into a problem in the Alfresco system which, upon further analysis, turned out to …

One of my favorite things about working at MySQL is that we are a distributed company. We have developers spread across dozens of countries, and most of them work from home offices. Before joining MySQL, I spent many years working for companies which forced the developers to work in centralized “development centers”, big office buildings located in various parts of the world. My one-year anniversary of working at MySQL is coming up in a couple of months, and I’m still amazed at how much better the communication is here than it was at those big companies with all the developers jammed into the same building.

At any time of day, I can log onto the internal MySQL IRC channels and discuss an idea or a problem with a MySQL core developer in some part of the world - in real time! We also make extensive use of VoIP technology, and so I end up communicating with my colleagues at MySQL much more regularly and efficiently than I ever imagined …

The title of this post come from a phrase I heard used by one of the AIX kernel developers when discussing techniques for debugging system crashes or bugs without having to ask the customer to reproduce a problem that occurred on a production. Even though it would be totally unacceptable to take a customers car and try to make the brakes fail “with a debug build”, developers often ask similar things of customers running software in production systems. At the time I heard this quote, I felt frustrated as a developer because there was not much that we could change in the software project I was building to avoid ever having to ask a customer to “re-crash the car”. The best thing that was offered up was coming up with some kind of unified set of error messages in the code base. A good idea, but far from actually solving the problem. At that time, the best system available was Windows crashdumps - but they only helped to find crashes, not with …