I am very happy to see Markus go in great detail about why the "new" features such as stored procedures and triggers are needed in MySQL. Many thanks to all those who took the time to comment.

I had asked the same question on Ruby on Rails list and following are the responses I received.

Joe said:

I think it's more along the lines of keeping everything in one layer. See this:

Choose a single layer of cleverness
http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000516.html

I'm sort of coming around to that way of thinking. I switched from MySQL to PostgreSQL about two years ago and loved it. But now it DOES sound appealing to just handle stuff in Ruby/Rails instead of switching to pgsql for sprocs, constraints, triggers, etc. …

But there are still a few things to do before it can go stable. I reworked the client and admin roadmap the other day. I moved a couple items to a post 1.0.0 release. Specifically I moved the cache advances, session abstraction and expanded perm XML container. However if anyone steps up who has an immediate need for these features and does significant code contributions, these features could still of course be fast tracked to be included into 1.0.0 stable.

However even with this "reduction" in 1.0.0 scope, we still have a fair bit of work ahead of us. Obviously there are the usual bug fixes. I just fixed a few issues in the LiveUser_Admin_Storage layer were we dynamically generate the SQL to make our API so flexible. People really seem to be pushing the API more and more when I look at what …

Here's my response to David Heinemeier Hansson's statement about being "entirely uninterested in fancy features like stored procedures, triggers, and the like" and Frank Mash's article about this issue.

MySQL simply *needs* features like Stored Procedures, User Defined Functions, Triggers etc. to be taken serious on the database market! So long has MySQL been criticized for not providing them - now as they have been introduced, it would be stupid to criticize MySQL *for* providing them.

MySQL has a very good chance to get as advanced as any other database system without losing it's simplicity. I don't think …

So David Heinemeier Hansson, the inventor of Rails was recently interviewed by Lenz Grimmer of MySQL AB.

I was very happy to see the interview on PlanetMySQL as just the other day I was talking about RubyOnRails on this blog and was surprised to see that no one posted a comment about Rails. Actually, I got only one comment about PHP which honestly made me very sad.

I am also very glad to hear about DHH's future plans of continuing to support Rails but not like MySQL AB supports MySQL (Not that I don't like MySQL's way).

On the other hand, being a DBA, I was kinda disappointed at David's following remarks:

"I love MySQL because its fast and easy for the …

And I thought I had no life. (Of course, we don't have Fry's in Oz, either - but at least there's Harvey Norman's, right?) This was thought up by a co-worker who has a sense of humour nearly as twisted as my own. (Speaking of which - where's my MST3K vids already, mate?) I wonder what operating system he uses? I'm thinking Solaris. Or quite possibly Irix. Or - just maybe - Gentoo. Database? That's easy - Informix. Or possibly Postgres/win32 running on Windows NT/Alpha. In any case, I think this guy bears watching.

And I thought I had no life. (Of course, we don't have Fry's in Oz, either - but at least there's Harvey Norman's, right?) This was thought up by a co-worker who has a sense of humour nearly as twisted as my own. (Speaking of which - where's my MST3K vids already, mate?) I wonder what operating system he uses? I'm thinking Solaris. Or quite possibly Irix. Or - just maybe - Gentoo. Database? That's easy - Informix. Or possibly Postgres/win32 running on Windows NT/Alpha. In any case, I think this guy bears watching.

The Ruby scripting language was first published in 1995, and has a very dedicated and active community of users around it. And with the release of the Ruby on Rails web framework in July 2004, Ruby has emerged as a serious alternative to PHP and Java for developing database-driven web sites. MySQL is one of the most popular choices as a database backend for Ruby on Rails applications and we support the Rails community with a dedicated forum about MySQL and Rails.

I’ve posted a recording of a presentation I delivered on Normalization for anyone who is interested. The session was delivered to the Lethbridge MySQL User Group last Wednesday. The audio wound up being rather poor, so I am not making this part of my regular video selection (I’ll be re-recording it at the MySQL User Conference anyway).

Watch it at http://www.openwin.org/mike/video/normalization-2006-02/normalization2006-02-08.html

Turn up your speakers and forgive the garbled audio. Requires Flash, best viewed on a 1024×768 or better screen.

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate Mike Kruckenberg on his son (he's sooo precious).

It must feel pretty good to have your son born the same day as your birthday.

Congrats Mike!

Frank
P.S. Thanks Jay

A NPR broadcast that includes a mention of Translucent Databases, a book by my friend Peter Wayner. The book provides a set of technical methods that can be implemented to protect the privacy and security of software users.