It wasn’t that long ago that MySQL released the GA Release of Version 5.0 with major new features (Oct 24 2005). It still took 5.0 about a year to go from alpha to GA, however I’d suspect a much shorter turnaround this time.

Version 5.1 is already at alpha, and the largest public functionality mentioned has been Partitioning. It is also anticipated that Storage Engines (a very handy MySQL feature in comparison to other RDBS products), will be a hot-pluggable API instead of a source re-compilation. Now I’ve never even looked at the Storage Engine code, but it’s been talked about a few …

In a recent job interview I was asked the question regarding Unit Testing/Automated Testing of a Database? An interesting question and indeed an interesting problem. I thought it was a good topic to describe what I’ve done in the past, and where I would go for a more complete testing environment given the opportunity of a entire XP project.

This is the approach I have implemented successfully in the past. It’s not a complete solution, however at the time with the client it provided appropriate coverage.

I don’t use a framework such as dbUnit to load data via XML, or specifically test data. XML is ugly to store data, and also with maintenance and comparison. I start with a pre-configured database of representative sample data, refer to my notes later on this, and then I use the tests of the application to perform the necessary data …

Arjen has mentioned prior, Brian Aker will be speaking at Linux.conf.au (Dunedin, NZ) next week, then at the Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne MySQL user groups (I'll be there for Brisbane & Dunedin talks).

A *questionable* program means that Arjen will be speaking on 'Concurrency Control in RDBMS' at the same time as Rasmus' 'Building Rich Web applications with PHP 5', and Brian's talk conflicts with Stewart's MySQL Cluster talk.

Oh well, can't win every time.

... as long as they are related to MySQL or database topics.

Unfortunately, there were often comments on my articles that were just spam and they had nothing to do with MySQL or databases at all. I always deleted them manually and one day I decided to only allow comments to people who are logged in.

But I received quite a lot of feedback from people who wanted to post relevant comments, but they didn't have an account and so couldn't answer. Now I have changed the setting back to its original state, because I'm quite curious about what people think about what I write and so, they should have a chance to tell me and the blog's readers :-).

I have just discovered that the MySQL 5.0 Beta Certification Exams are available. The Developer Exams are available now, the Administrator Exams are scheduled to be available by the end of January.

The way to get MySQL 5.0 certified has changed a bit compared to the 4.x exams. There are 2 exams for each the Developer and Administrator Certifications. Only if one passes both exams, somebody can title himself either a CMDEV (Certified MySQL Developer) or CMDBA (Certified MySQL Database Administrator). There are no more prerequisites, so the exams can be taken in any order (which was not the case with the 4.x exams where the Core exam was a prerequisite for the Professional exam).

There are also upgrade exams for people who have already passed the 4.x exams. One exam is necessary to upgrade from 4.x Core to 5.0 CMDEV and one exam from 4.x Professional to 5.0 CMADM. Unfortunately, there is no more detailed information about …

In the process of cleaning up unused db4free.net database accounts, the first databases with their users have now been deleted.

During the last month I've sent out emails to all users asking them whether they would like to keep their account. Today I have deleted 966 database accounts, where people have either decided not to use it anymore, or where no data has been stored and the database hasn't been accessed within the last month.

Other 817 accounts, where the users didn't give me a decision, have been set inactive - they can still login but don't have access to their (still existing) database anymore. So there is still a final chance to get access again, if the database is really needed. Until the end of January I will also delete those accounts, where the user didn't ask for re-creation.

Before, there were 3,206 accounts from which 966 have been …

The Boston MySQL Meetup Group was successful yet again! I was a bit worried about my presentation, that it would be too basic or folks would have wanted to see actual code and scripts, but it turned out well.

You may notice that the links at the side (http://www.sheeri.com if you’re reading a feed) include a category called “Presentations”. Currently the December presentation is linked to, direct to Google Video, and the slides from tonight’s meeting are also up in PDF format as well as macromedia flash. And, of course, tonight’s video, thanx to Mike Kruckenberg. Mike also took pictures!

Folks who were at the presentation — feel free to let me know what you thought of it. Folks not at the presentation — feel free to watch the video and let me know what you think. I’m especially interested for those folks …

VMWare recently released a freeware called VMWare Player that can play a pre-built virtual machine file. A virtual machine is an OS bundled with whatever the virtual machine creator put there. This is perfect for people to test-drive various operating systems and software, without going through the hassle of installing themselves. VMWare currently provides virtual machines preloaded with RedHat, Novell Suse, ubuntu, Oracle, MySql, and Bea, among others.

Memory used to be a bottleneck for virtualization software to take off. However, on the hardware side of things, both Intel and AMD are pushing 64-bit processors pretty aggressively now. With 64-bit architecture, the memory space the operating system can access increases exponentially (from 2^32 to 2^64). With the push towards 64-bit and the emergence of virtualization technology, I wonder what kind of impact this will have …

Ben Forta sent me a copy of his latest book: MySQL Crash Course a book based on his: Teach yourself SQL in 10 minutes book.

MySQL Crash Course is a concise guide (it's actually about the size of a novel, but 300 pages) to MySQL. I am a big fan of short and to the point books. Good job keeping it short Ben, I know you have written some hefty ones. ;)

The book doesn't focus on the system administration of MySQL, but rather the programming side of things - SQL.

I think this book would be great for someone who doesn't do a …

Backups of your database data and database maintenance are essential things that everybody should do who runs database servers in production.

I used to do this with a little batch that looks like this:

mysqldump --add-drop-table --default-character-set=utf8 
  --databases mysql -h localhost -u [my root user] -p 
  > "E:\mysql_dump\dump_mysql.sql"


mysqldump --add-drop-table --default-character-set=utf8 
  --all-databases -h localhost -u [my working user] -p 
  > "E:\mysql_dump\dump.sql"


mysqlcheck -u [my root user] -p --all-databases --analyze --optimize

This little batch creates two dump files - one with the mysql database which stores all the privilege data and a second dump file with the rest of the data (my working user has privileges for all databases except mysql). Finally, the mysqlcheck command optimizes my MyISAM tables and renews the index information of …