Good news fellow DBAs; adding to the already packed list of RSS/Atom aggregation sites out there on the internet, there is a new site catering to DBAs called Relationalnews. Feel free to add your feed(s) for aggregation, because what else do bloggers want but more visibility to search engines, right? This was basically a coding project to get familiar with CodeIgnitor as well as RSS and Atom xml feed processing in PHP. Pretty simple looking back on it, and it was generally a fun project.I’ll probably add more features to the site at a later time, with free time being what it is…So read the news! http://relationalnews.com 

Here is a little tid bit about a useful MySQL extension to the SQL standard, since I have given this same hint to several people in a short timeframe. A good friend from good old Berlin who runs a site for selling car parts was the first to ask, so I am giving him credit for bringing this nifty operator back to mind. Essentially the problem is that frequently we want to easily handle matching against some value or NULL with the same code. Obviously the standard expects you to switch from the standard equal operator to "IS" for matching a NULL. After all NULL is not equal to anything. Right, but its tedious to handle this in the code so MySQL invented the "<=>" operator aka the "NULL-safe equal to operator". Also very useful in combination with prepared statements.

Side note: I must …

Here is a little tid bit about a useful MySQL extension to the SQL standard, since I have given this same hint to several people in a short timeframe. A good friend from good old Berlin who runs a site for selling car parts was the first to ask, so I am giving him credit for bringing this nifty operator back to mind. Essentially the problem is that frequently we want to easily handle matching against some value or NULL with the same code. Obviously the standard expects you to switch from the standard equal operator to "IS" for matching a NULL. After all NULL is not equal to anything. Right, but its tedious to handle this in the code so MySQL invented the "<=>" operator aka the "NULL-safe equal to operator". Also very useful in combination with prepared statements.

Side note: I must …

It's been over a month (and three hurricanes in America) since I've posted a blog. More than a few of you've noticed - thanks for the prodding...

It's been a busy summer, on nearly every front. Customer activity hasn't slowed down, and the good news surrounding the (otherwise unfortunate) economic crisis embroiling many customers (especially those in the financial services industry, a heavy concentration for Sun) is that it's whipping up the winds of change. Customers facing spending pressure, or tiring of vendor price increases have new options, and there's a new appetite to explore those options (nothing like mandates from the CEO to reduce spending by 50%).

One of my more interesting recent meetings wasn't with a customer, though, it was with an equity analyst from a global financial institution. Equity analysts publish research that feeds the investment community - their (free) research and financial analysis accompanies …

This is a basic heads up post, perhaps even blatant self marketing. So, please continue reading.

If anyone recalls the website http://mysql-dba.com they would know that it’s based on the planet.py codebase that is written in python. I originally wrote a simple php script that utilized the lastRSS.php class for parsing feeds on the backend for archival purposes to be used at a later date. I say archival and later date because the site itself did not utilize any of the relational data storage to run the site. The site’s python code and cache was updated by cron scripts every 15 minutes and new data was scp’d from my dev server to my webhost’s servers.  This process eventually was quite randomly run since my development server rack in the garage at home gets really hot during the summer months and I ended up taking the servers offline unless I was actively using them for other purposes. You could say the priority of the site came …

Are you a student and like to earn $500 ? Here are three steps:

• Download GlassFish v2 UR2 and MySQL 5.1 Community Edition
• Create a cool open-source web application using them
• Write a review and submit your URL

That's all it takes for a chance to win $500. And there are 5 $250 second prizes as well. The prize money comes right in time for winter holiday shopping :)

A pre-compiled list of several projects is available for you to get started. And you can certainly churn an innovative idea from your creative mind!

Make sure to read the …

If there is one thing that I terribly miss after moving to this country, that would be the variety of Mangoes in India. I've been asked at the United States Customs if I'm importing any mangoes. The fruit's flavor, fragrance and color is just great so I don't blame them at all. There is even International Mango Festival conducted every year since 1987 in Delhi. The festival features more than 550 varieties for visitors to view and taste.

I can talk at lengths about the fruit Mango but this entry is about Mango*. So what is it ?

How dramatic a topic. Anyways, I just send of an email to the PDO list, where I CC'ed a long list of developers from the community and RDBMS vendors. I hope that this will become the starting point for work on a PDO version 1.1. This will hopefully will just be the first step towards even bigger things to come, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. I really think that today we have more developers and vendors interested than ever. Now we just need to figure out how to work together within the PHP development and legal model. But recent discussions, especially with various vendors, have made me more hopeful than ever that we have a chance to make it happen. Please join the discussion if you are interested.

That being said, I wanted to make a few additional points. Who did I include or know about: I contacted Ulf from Sun. …

How dramatic a topic. Anyways, I just send of an email to the PDO list, where I CC'ed a long list of developers from the community and RDBMS vendors. I hope that this will become the starting point for work on a PDO version 1.1. This will hopefully will just be the first step towards even bigger things to come, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. I really think that today we have more developers and vendors interested than ever. Now we just need to figure out how to work together within the PHP development and legal model. But recent discussions, especially with various vendors, have made me more hopeful than ever that we have a chance to make it happen. Please join the discussion if you are interested.

That being said, I wanted to make a few additional points. Who did I include or know about: I contacted Ulf from Sun. …

I was surprised to find yesterday when using MySQL 5.1.26-rc with a client I’m recommending 5.1 to, some information not seen in the EXPLAIN plan before while reviewing SQL Statements.

Using join buffer

+----+-------------+-------+--------+---------------+--------------+---------+------------------------+-------+----------------------------------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type   | possible_keys | key          | key_len | ref                    | rows  | Extra                                        |
+----+-------------+-------+--------+---------------+--------------+---------+------------------------+-------+----------------------------------------------+
|  1 | SIMPLE      | lr    | ALL    | NULL          | NULL         | NULL    | NULL                   |  1084 | Using where; Using temporary; Using filesort |
|  1 | SIMPLE      | ca    | ref    | update_check  | update_check | 4       | XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX      |     4 | Using …