Trying to fiddle with my linux.conf.au presentation in OpenOffice.org2 (the version that comes with Ubuntu Breezy).

It’s as buggy as all hell.

At the moment, after pasting in some slides from another presentation (if it doesn’t randomly crash some short time afterwards) I can’t save the file. Really useful.

grrr….

There's an interesting editorial in InfoWorld about SQL Server where Sean McCown, a noted SQL Server author and InfoWorld reviewer, says that only "tree huggers" would use an open source database. Maybe he should have checked with the IT staff at InfoWorld since they run MySQL and the LAMP stack extensively in InfoWorld's operations.  In fact InfoWorld's former CTO Chad Dickerson, frequently wrote about their use of MySQL and other open source products. I've put a few quotes and links below.  But maybe Chad is just a tree hugger. 

Maybe Alcatel, Cardinal Health, the Census Bureau, CNet, Evite, Friendser, The Gap, Google, Lufthansa, Macy's, Nasa, Nokia, Orbitz, Sabre, Sony, Suzuki, Tellme Networks, TicketMaster and eight million other …

There's an interesting editorial in InfoWorld about SQL Server where Sean McCown, a noted SQL Server author and InfoWorld reviewer, says that only "tree huggers" would use an open source database. Maybe he should have checked with the IT staff at InfoWorld since they run MySQL and the LAMP stack extensively in InfoWorld's operations.  In fact InfoWorld's former CTO Chad Dickerson, frequently wrote about their use of MySQL and other open source products. I've put a few quotes and links below.  But maybe Chad is just a tree hugger. 

Maybe Alcatel, Cardinal Health, the Census Bureau, CNet, Evite, Friendser, The Gap, Google, Lufthansa, Macy's, Nasa, Nokia, Orbitz, Sabre, Sony, Suzuki, Tellme Networks, TicketMaster and eight million other …

It's definitely possible to run MySQL Server (with all its tables) on a CD-ROM, MySQL is extremely suited for such applications. It can run entirely from CD-ROM and can be configured to be completely read-only. This has even recently been done by someone in Melbourne to create a Wikipedia DVD.

Yes it need to be able to create some temp tables, but you can set the path for that. So that's not an issue. Basically, it's all about configuring everything appropriately for this particular environment. But it's been done, this is not "the frontier" ;-)

MySQL: Can MySQL be run from a CDROM?

The question is asked. The answer is - yes!

Temporary tables can be store anywhere - e.g. the system’s temporary directory (/tmp on unix, probably c:\temp or something on windows… i’m sure there’s one of those %FOO% things for it).

IIRC you may need to start it with a flag or something - but the embedded library - libmysqld (where the mysql server runs within your process - you link to libmysqld instead of libmysql).

Of course, if you’re linking mysql with non-gpl code, you’ll need a license from us.

UPDATED (Had to fix some inaccuracies)

And I thought we had grown out of this....

Part of today's SDForum Open Source in the Enterprise executive summit involved some furious debate on where open source is going. I had the interesting luck to sit at a table with John Roberts (CEO, SugarCRM), Mary Coleman (Managing Partner with Walden International, a smart and active (and savvy) open source investor), and representatives from two of software's biggest proprietary vendors, among others.

It's [one of] these last two who surprised me with a willful disregard for facts about open source adoption. I'm actually used to an increasingly sophisticated view of open source from both companies, but what I heard today was an embarrassment to [one of their employers].

It was …

For those folks out there that are used to Derby, or HSQL, here‘s a way to embed MySQL into your Java application that you might not have seen.

As a bonus, you get all of the third-party tool support for MySQL that you‘re used to (including easy access from Perl, PHP, etc), and it doesn‘t steal heap space from your Java application.

Prerequesites:

(1) Connector/J 5.0.0 or newer

(2) Connector/MXJ 5.0.0 or newer

Make sure that the JDBC driver, and the .jar file from Connector/MXJ are in your classpath.

Craft your JDBC URL like so after registering the driver:

“jdbc:mysql:mxj:///test“

(notice the :mxj: there, which means use the MXJ MySQL server “container” (for lack of a better word)

When …

For those folks out there that are used to Derby, or HSQL, here's a way to embed MySQL into your Java application that you might not have seen.

As a bonus, you get all of the third-party tool support for MySQL that you're used to (including easy access from Perl, PHP, etc), and it doesn't steal heap space from your Java application.

Prerequesites:

(1) Connector/J 5.0.0 or newer

(2) Connector/MXJ 5.0.0 or newer

Make sure that the JDBC driver, and the .jar file from Connector/MXJ are in your classpath.

Craft your JDBC URL like so after registering the driver:

"jdbc:mysql:mxj:///test"

(notice the :mxj: there, which means use the MXJ MySQL server "container" (for lack of a better word)

When your …

For those folks out there that are used to Derby, or HSQL, here‘s a way to embed MySQL into your Java application that you might not have seen.

As a bonus, you get all of the third-party tool support for MySQL that you‘re used to (including easy access from Perl, PHP, etc), and it doesn‘t steal heap space from your Java application.

Prerequesites:

(1) Connector/J 5.0.0 or newer

(2) Connector/MXJ 5.0.0 or newer

Make sure that the JDBC driver, and the .jar file from Connector/MXJ are in your classpath.

Craft your JDBC URL like so after registering the driver:

“jdbc:mysql:mxj:///test“

(notice the :mxj: there, which means use the MXJ MySQL server “container” (for lack of a better word)

When …

I got an interesting comment the other day from Aniket, a reader of my blog.

He asks:

i'm in the process of designing a GPS system and wanted to know that is it possible to keep MySQL and the database on a CDROM and query it from a C IDE(KDevelop)?
My answer:

While I haven't done this (tried to run MySQL from a CDROM), I would think that this is not possible since MySQL needs to create temporary tables from time to time and I can't see that happening if MYSQL and the database are installed on a CDROM.

Am I right?

What do you guys (MySQL experts) think?

Can a database and MySQL be run from a CDROM? What if plenty of RAM is available?

Has anyone been able to do this before?

What alternatives exist for Aniket?

Thank you,

Frank