First let me point out MySQL doesn't support check constraints, I just wanted to point that out up front before you run off looking for them. When I was writing content on Triggers for my site www.mysqldevelopment.com, I was looking at ways to use triggers in the real world. People were asking me why they might want to use them. I came up with a few but one I mentioned just didn't seem to work. That was implementing check constraints via triggers. A check constraint is a constraint on a column in a table which limits what the column will accept, Oracle for example allows the use of check constraints when creating a table. MySQL itself has constraints such as primary key and unique but the features are very much limited to what MySQL wants you to do. A check constraint allows more flexibility, you can dictate what you want to allow in the column.

For me it was obvious that …

I met with my boss, Patrik today. We discussed some of the work I've been doing the last quarter, the direction we're planning on going and some of the expectations for the next quarter. I also completed my expense report for the trip to Germany in September. Finally.

I feel pretty special that someone would travel from Finland to Seattle in order to see me. Even if it's a stop-off on the way to Cupertino :)

We had lunch at the space needle after our meeting. Very good (and expensive) food there. As the restaurant rotated, I gave him the sitting tour of the layout of the city.

Afterwards, we drove over 520 and did a drive-through tour of Redmond and the Microsoft campus. …

The first Boston MySQL Meetup went swimmingly. About 1/2 the people who RSVP’s yes or maybe showed up, which meant that the fine Optaros folks hosting us (thanx again to Stephen Walli) got pizza as a thank-you gift.

My boss offered me a ride home, otherwise I would have taken Stephen up on his offer to get a beer. Next time, definitely — I’ll just go into work later, and not be tempted by a ride home.

The demographics of the group was really amazing:

about 15% female
those with no experience with any database
those with experience with databases but not MySQL
those who’ve been using MySQL for weeks
those who’ve been using MySQL for months
those who’ve been using MySQL for years
those who are trying to convince their company to switch
about 10% Indian …

Having used Oracle, DB2, Postgres, Sybase, Informix, and MSSQL, I always enjoyed that MySQL just named everything “MySQL”. Sure, it can get confusing — there’s MySQL the server, MySQL the client, MySQL the database instance. . . .MySQL the flamethrower (the kids love this one). . . .But seriously, the ‘big guys’ have all this complicated jargon for really simple ideas.

MySQL has joined them. Granted, I’d been out of the MySQL world for about a year, and some wonderful things have happened in that year. Even a year ago, the company I worked for wasn’t using the most recent software nor taking advantage of all the features their versions of MySQL did have to offer. But I digress.

I’ve been working on MySQL knowledge, particularly with the free webinars. Today I attended the “MySQL Network and MySQL 5.0″ webinar, where I learned that MySQL is packaging (better) software, support, tools, access to developers, and a …

BIRT is rich reporting technology powered by the Eclipse BIRT project. Actuate BIRT inlcudes support and subscription sevcies, is MySQL Network Certified and is a recommended reporting and analytics component of a MySQL Data Warehouse Scale-Out Solution Set.

Here is some how-to information on using BIRT with MySQL.

Flash demo on building a complex report with BIRT on MySQL »
Example of building a report against Bugzilla on MySQL »

This site had been unstable for the last couple of weeks, due to my hosting company’s issues with servers. My Apache and MySql database have both been moved to a different server. Hopefully things will be stable from now on.

During the troubleshooting time, I used a few commands to find out the uptime of both server and MySql database. I thought these would be helpful to other people so here they are.

To find out the uptime of your Linux server, any one of the following commands will do:
w
uptime
top

To find out the uptime of your mysql demon, log into the server using mysql command line, then issue the following command:
\s

I am sure there is a way to find out how long Apache has been running, but I just don’t know. Can anybody enlighten me? Thanks.

I am not interest in your software patent pledges. I want you to freaken burn them, I want you to freaken stop lobbying for this crap and I want you instead to lobby to ban their very existence. So I am very much in agreement with Florian Müller's (who has been working hard in cooperation with MySQL to prevent a legitimization of software patents in Europe) assessment of the state of affairs.

I do not buy into the thought that patents, especially in the software industry do anything for innovation. Would any software company really stop investing in innovation? I think not. The software industry is moving too fast. Its about being the first mover and for most of us innovation is just part of our day to day lives as we solve real customer needs.

We do not have time to write up shady crap that covers everything and says nothing. We …

In my blog post on how to implement ADD_TO_SET() and REMOVE_FROM_SET() I came to the conclusion that the use of stored functions generates tremendous overhead. In a reaction MySQL developer Per-Erik Martin pointed out to me that this might not be true but just a consequence of a very strange behaviour of MySQL's built-in BENCHMARK() function.

Per-Erik Martin didn't trust the results from my BENCHMARK() tests at first as my overhead factor of about 10 to 50 (which he could in fact reproduce with similar results) for simple stored functions "seemed a bit absurd" to him. So he implemented his own benchmark tests as stored procedures, ended up with an overhead factor of only about 2 to 3 and came to the conclusion that "there's something …

My two weeks with Alfresco has opened my eyes somewhat to the perils of starting an open source "commercial community." The development of a community de novo for a commercial entity entails all sorts of pitfalls that an organic community simply doesn't need to be bothered with. Or, rather, they do, but the stakes (reputation instead of financial) aren't the same.

For example, when a commercial open source's project is in its nascence, it is fragile. Subject to death by boredom (no one cares about the project), fork, and misappropriation. If you're Red Hat with millions of downloads and a growing business, this latter concern is, well, not very concerning. But if you're a new player like SugarCRM, it is.

In fact, SugarCRM dealt with this very problem late last year when …