Last night happened what I've always been afraid of. It started when I tried to update PostgreSQL to the latest version, something that I'm not very familiar with (so to be honest - it was completely my own fault). I also have to admit that I'm not a Linux guru - I like Linux and I can work with it quite comfortably, but when it comes to problems that I didn't expect, I sometimes end up trying and messing things up instead of really keeping everything under control.

First I tried to update the server with the .tar.gz file and followed the instructions from the PostgreSQL documentation. The installation process seemed to work fine, but when I thought, the installation was done, I didn't manage to start the server with the new version.

Next I downloaded the .rpm file from the SuSE 10.1 development repository. That's where the real problems started to arise - there were dependencies over and over and I tried to solve them …

In the mysql forums, there's been a quite lively discussion regarding how to go about error handling. A quick summary:

The MySQL Stored Procedure, trigger and function syntax supports HANDLERs to react to on or more CONDITIONs, should they arise. The syntax and the semantics of these are compliant with the 2003 version of the SQL Standard (this is both an ANSI as well as an ISO standard).

A condition can take several forms: it might be:

• 
  
• a particular SQLSTATE (these are defined in the SQL Standard)
  
• a particular mysql specific error code
  …

As part of integrating Lucene with my Ruby on Rails project, I needed to get MySQL working with Java on my server. Following are the summarized steps I took to make my first query:

1. Download MySQL Connector J
2. After downloading, extract the archive

tar -zxvf mysql-connector-java-3.1.12.tar.gz

3. Copy the jar file to your class path. If using bash, modify .bashrc and place the class path there. Remember to export the classpath so it's available to your current session.

4. Create a connect function (The following is a crude example. Modify before usage). Also ensure you have a property named con of type Connection defined.

public static void Connect()
throws Exception {
try {
Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
}
catch …

As the time for MySQL UC 2006 approaches closer, all my blogosphere friends are excited about going to the event of the year, that is except me of course.

The sessions are so mouth watering that I can hardly control myself.

I really wanted to be at the conference myself but unfortunately won't be able to make it this year.

Lately I have been working crazily trying to integrate Lucene with my Ruby on Rails based application. I first tried Ferret by Dave Balmain and it was working just fine however I needed some serious scalability for this application and after a week of research and testing, I finally decided to go with Lucene.

Today I bought …

Oh yeah, seems people are really starting to get excited about session and tutorials at the MySQL User's Conference in April, myself included! I know I am presenting a couple sessions, but I'm as excited as anyone else about attending some of the tutorials and presentations, and, especially, meeting some of the folks that I've interacted with for so long on the forums and in the community (Markus, Roland, Andrew, Giuseppe, Ronald, Peter Zaitsev, Mike K, …

Later today I will be heading off to the sixth Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting in Brussels, Belgium. I look forward to the various sessions and meeting with the members of other Open Source projects, especially the folks from the openSUSE team. I hope this meeting allows me to build closer relations to other OSS projects that use or support MySQL in any way.

See you there! After having checked into my hotel tonight, I'll try to find my way to Le Roy d'Espagne to meet with others that arrived today.

I just ran David Wheeler’s SLOCCount tool on a copy of eZ publish 3.7.3.

SLOCCount is:

a set of tools for counting physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) in a large number of languages of a potentially large set of programs.

–from http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/

The tool generated a bunch of interesting stats, including an estimated cost to develop the eZ publish codebase: $5,701,201 USD.

Of course, it is always good to take stats with a grain of salt - as the saying goes, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.” These stats would be most interesting if we could compare the output of SLOCCount with records of what we actually did.

eZ …

Whenever we poll our users, the topic of performance tuning and optimization always scores the highest interest level. So at the MySQL Users Conference, we have a full track devoted to performance tuning.  (Hey, we're not dummies. Everyone wants a little extra performance!) This includes best practices presentations by some of the elite performance gurus from inside MySQL and among our top users and partners.  This includes talks by people like performance engineer Peter Zaitsev (pictured above), community guy Jay Pipes, Optimization wizard Timour …

Homework! Below is a fairly random extract from the database schema of Horde 3.0.7... what's wrong with this:

CREATE TABLE horde_prefs (
    pref_uid        VARCHAR(200) NOT NULL,
    pref_scope      VARCHAR(16) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
    pref_name       VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL,
    pref_value      LONGTEXT NULL,

    PRIMARY KEY (pref_uid, pref_scope, pref_name)
);

Please post your insights and conclusions as comments to this post...

Folks, I‘m going to be involved in (giving the first, available for questions on the second) webcasts on Java and MySQL related topics, so if you read this blog because you‘re interested in those topics, you should check them out (they‘re free).

The first, For Java Developers Only: Developing and Deploying JDBC-based Applications with MySQL is on March 2nd. I‘ll be covering some common pitfalls, new features available with MySQL-5.0 (including XA and stored procedures), and a look at what‘s coming in JDBC-4.0.

The second on March 9th, Cost-Effective Enterprise Content Management Using Alfresco and MySQL is a webcast from Alfresco‘s founder and CTO, John Newton. Alfreso is an open source, enterprise content management system that …