Jay Pipes, co-author of "Pro MySQL" published by Apress joined MySQL recently as our latest community guy.  Jay is an excellent fit for the company.  He has a terrific "can do" attitude and has been out writing and blogging about MySQL for ages.  Not only is he a MySQL expert, he's also a great speaker and keen to help out on community projects.  Soon enough we'll be letting him loose speaking at conferences including our own MySQL Users Conference in April. 

• Amazon: Pro MySQL
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Earlier I asked the question about how can one use the functionality of rand() in an efficient way to sort the results.

Scott Noyes pointed out a post by Jan Kneschke that answered my question.

The query I created after going through Jan's post is given below for quick reference:

SELECT url,field1,field2 FROM active AS active1 JOIN ( SELECT ROUND( RAND( ) * ( SELECT MAX( cid ) FROM active ) ) AS cid) AS active2 WHERE active1.cid >= active2.cid ORDER BY active1.cid ASC LIMIT 1

Thanks
Frank

Hey look! CIA uses MySQL:

http://cia.navi.cx/info

A new article entitled How To Look At MySQL Joins and More ORDER BY With LIMIT has been released which takes an a priori approach to understanding MySQL joins. In the article we take a query that is in need of optimization and look at how MySQL will execute the join and why, before consulting EXPLAIN. Then we look at how the ORDER BY with LIMIT optimization is approached differently in the context of multi-table joins. Finally, with this optimization we can predict the new optimized join plan MySQL will choose before consulting EXPLAIN.

In October, very shortly before MySQL 5 became a Production Release, I tested Joomla and found out that there were a lot of problems if SQL mode is enabled. I reported the problem, but the developers didn't seem very interested and argued, MySQL was still a Release Candidate.

Now, 3 months have passed by and some new maintenance releases of Joomla were released in the meantime, so I thought it would be interested if the problems have been solved.

I installed Joomla 1.0.7 (using my local MySQL 5.0.18-max-nt installation with SQL mode "STRICT_TRANS_TABLES, NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER, NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION") and the first thing I tried was to create a new user.

And it still failed. First I thought, this could be an Opera problem (as I use Opera as default browser) and tried it with Internet Explorer. It still failed. So I set the SQL mode to '' (empty) and tried it again - suddenly it worked. So the evidence is …

Got my copy of Linux Maqazine today. February includes the second in a series that started in December on MySQL 5 features. This month's article is MySQL 5: Stored Functions and Cursors, a look at using stored functions and cursors in building functionality for a stock-tracking application.

The MySQL article is followed by an article on DB4O, an open source object database (not represented in the open source database consortium) . I toyed with PostgreSQL back in the late 90s and recall it having some object orientation that was not easy to get my head around. Curious to see what DB4O is up to, I hadn't heard much about them until now …

So, Markus Popp’s recent blog entry about trying to give a user permissions to all databases except one got me thinking.

MySQL has grown immensely, and like many products, new features are compatible with old features. . . somewhat.

Review/baseline:

For current versions of MySQL, permissions are granted and revoked by the GRANT and REVOKE commands. In older versions, administrators had to muck with the access control tables by hand, and then FLUSH PRIVILEGES to enable the new access controls.

The blog entry got me thinking. Currently, if you want to remove all rights from a user, including the ability to login, you have to REVOKE privileges and then DELETE from the mysql.user table. And then, of course, FLUSH PRIVILEGES because you manually …

The GPLv3 draft suggests some new dimensions and options for developers of GPL software. At MySQL, we believe in Free Software and in Open Source. We believe in ubiquity.

So to be very clear:
We do not intend to make any changes that would harm the community.

What we do want, is input from the MySQL community on licensing. GPLv3 is not yet written in stone, and as co-chair of the Discussion Committee B at FSF, I am depending on your feedback. Feel free to ask questions, raise concerns, come with suggestions!

I'm not sure how I missed Danny O'Brien's presentation at Oscon last year "On Evil." At any rate, it's now available on the ITConversations podcast.  The whole thing is about 15 minutes long and is a tongue in cheek look at good and evil in the open source world including mentions of all the hot topics: GPL licensing, Google, Maureen O'Gara, Ruby, Perl, Linus Torvalds and the ultimate evil: Software Patents. 

For those who aren't yet into podcasts, consider giving ITConversations a listen.  It's got some of the best content out there on a wide range of tech topics.  Next to Engadget and Phedippidations (don't ask) it's one of my favorites.  I'm hoping our Community guys will take up the mantle and develop a regular MySQL podcast in …

Last week I spent a half day at an SDForum think tank meeting "The Future of Open Source."  It was an invitation-only gathering of around 50 execs from the open source industry with a smattering of lawyers, VCs, corporate users and large IT companies including Microsoft, Novell, SAP, Sun, Symantec and Bank of America. The open source companies represented included providers such as Alfresco, BlackDuck, Collabnet, Covalent, Eclipse, Intalio, Funambol, JasperSoft, MySQL, Olliance Group, Optaros, OpenLogic, OSDL, SugarCRM, Zimbra, Zmanda and others.  A few companies were conspicuoulsy absent: JBoss, Red Hat, Sleepycat.

2006 will be a telling year for open source.  At MySQL …