This November, along with colleagues in the various Free Software and Open Source DBMS community, I will be speaking at the Open Source Database Conference 2005, a sister event of the popular International PHP Conference 2005.

In addition to co-presenting a day-long tutorial on MySQL and PHP at the PHP conference, I am also presenting an introductory talk on SQLite at the DBMS conference.

A few friends have commented on how this seems odd, however, they should know best of all that I am more than happy to speak on topics I have no knowledge of. ;) Joking aside, D. Richard Hipp, the SQLite developer, is helping me ensure that I will give a …

As has been noted on Amazon.com, I a working with Sams Publishing on the MySQL Phrasebook - a compact reference for novice or occasional users of MySQL.

Here is a snippet from the introduction:

If MySQL is a foreign land, then the MySQL Phrasebook is a concise guide to successfully navigating its broad streets, hectic bazaars and dark alleys. Whether you're a tourist, a regular visitor or even a local day-tripping to an unknown locale, this Phrasebook will help you find your way.

The Phrasebook is not a definitive guide to all aspects of MySQL. Instead, it provides examples of how to accomplish some of the most common tasks in MySQL. This core of practical knowledge …

You reckon you can make a site look good? You can try your magic for planetmysql.org

It's a fairly simple site, the output is based on a Smarty template and a stylesheet. You should be able to work out a basic new look by just modifying the stylesheet.

Post your mockup somewhere and comment to this posting, or send an email to the MySQL community alias (or to me directly).

The winner will get... Glory of course! And a 10th anniversary MySQL mug or T-shirt? Hmm, well you tell me. Let's funk up the planetmysql.org site!

By nat

In line with several of the comments on my note about the lack of European startups comes this Computer Business Review piece on a report from Indepen Consultants in the UK about Europe's information and communications technology policies. The redux is that "change will involve the entry and exit of firms, the hiring and firing of labour, and the need for more general-purpose skills". The report puts the blame on the labour regulations that make it difficult to get the "creative destruction" required to get the thriving ecosystem you see in the US, where hundreds of startups flourish in the Bay Area alone. The price of so many startups is low pay, rapid hiring and sudden firing (no job stability), but for the possible ultimate …

Ok, I don't know why anyone would be surprised by this, but Microsoft has told OSDL that they're not interested in creating a version of Office for Linux, there are no plans to do so, there's no secret prototype, nothin'.  Nada. Zip. The good news is OpenOffice is getting better all the time and Zimbra is a good Outlook / Exchange replacement.

There are folks at Microsoft help ensure co-existence and integration of open source technology within Microsoft customers, and we work routinely with folks from the Microsoft Windows group.  Many people are surprised, but Windows remains our #2 platform after Linux.  There …

Sometimes I use Thunderbird to handle large amounts of email.  All my email accounts are IMAP and I find that Thunderbird just handles them better than Outlook.  Thunderbird also removes deleted messages from my view and then purges them when I empty the trash saving me from that awful delete, purge deleted messages cycle.  When opening a folder that has 1000 messages in it, Outlook can take several minutes to respond whereas Thunderbird is immediately responsive.

However, this morning I was going through a folder with lots of emails and noticed something peculiar.  I read my mail threaded and I will often read the opening message of a conversation and, if I am not interested, delete the entire conversation without reading another message.  This time I was reading a conversation that came in from one of my mailing lists when the messages switched to a completely different lists.  The subject stayed the same and …

I've been on vacation the last two weeks - badly needed and very relaxing! Some of the things I had done:

• Visited the inlaws in Austria
• Did a lot of OpenSUSE beta testing (on both x86 and PPC), filed numerous bug reports
• Visited this year's SandWorld in Travemünde, which was truly amazing.

I also noticed that I am now listed as a speaker at the Opensource Database Conference which takes place on November 8th/9th in Frankfurt, Germany. Time to start working on the slides...

It seems the day job has finally caught up with me. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to update this blog in a few weeks. But please do keep checking back as we should be back to normal service soon.

Hello all.

I’m Jeff Lang. I work as a PHP web developer for a university I attend. I’ve been doing PHP work as well as some writing for a few years now. In my blog, I plan to focus more on the general aspects of PHP and how it’s used in the business and educational world rather than the technical side of things. A lot of technical information is already out there, so I plan to bring some fresh ideas and content to the world of PHP.

The first thing I want to touch upon is PHP in an educational setting. I feel much can be learned from PHP being taught in school; however, I would not recommend it for a first language. First, it is extremely common to couple MySQL with PHP. PHP can be taught stand-alone, but in the real world, the PHP-MySQL (or a similar database) combination is what is used in the majority of the cases. Students are forced not only to learn the mechanics of the PHP language, but they are also forced to learn the …

i spent my day hammering kittens porting mysql to sco openserver 6 today, a subject of some controversy.

i would not have mentioned it, except that it gave me another excuse to link to that page from everything can be beaten by chancre scolex (jhonen vasquez) and crab scrambly (brad canby). i?d buy a print of that page in a heartbeat.