This is part four of an ongoing series about my experiences while writing the MySQL Admin Cookbook for Packt Publishing. All previous parts can be found under the mysql-admin-cookbook label.

This part will be about more software used in the process of writing the book. The last episode covered writing tools, file/version management and backups. What's up now is graphics programs, virtualization and PDF handling.

Outlining

For outlining and structuring thoughts I like mind-maps. I know they are not for everyone, but if you like them and do not want to spend a lot of money on …

We’ve long wondered what might happen to all of that open source software from Sun Microsystems now that it’s at Oracle? Obviously, some pieces continue to live at Oracle (Java, Solaris, MySQL), but there are a number of open source projects that Oracle has either neglected to talk about or have been overlooked, particularly as we focused on user reactions, implications and finally approval of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun.

One significant group of open source technologies from Sun is its OpenSSO single sign-on identity and access …

I like to write tools that make hard things easy, when possible. By and large, MySQL is easy and simple. But some simple things are too hard with MySQL. I want to change that, at least for the things that matter the most to me, and which I think I know how to fix.

I will probably write a lot about this. I have already written a number of rants blog posts about the lack of instrumentation in MySQL, and that is where I’ll probably continue to put most of my energy.

To begin with, imagine this simple scenario. You are a remote DBA. Your client says “New Relic is showing periods of slow response time from the database.” You connect to MySQL at the command line and try to troubleshoot. How do you catch the problem in action, from within the database itself? The following are no good:

• It doesn’t count to see the problem two minutes later by observing the application tier, as New Relic does. That’s too late, and …

Dear MySQL Users,

We’re happy to announce the first Release Candidate (RC) of MySQL Workbench.
Version 5.2.21 includes many improvements and fixes for 62 bugs.

We have introduced a new ease of use feature on the Workbench Home screen – the Plug-in Starter area – top left hand side. The icons listed in that area are used to get quick access to the most popular plug-ins that have been written for MySQL Workbench, either by us or the community.

If you are planning to write a plug-in for Workbench, now is the right time to get started! We will be updating the documentation in the next week or 2 with all the details on how to write your own plug-in.

MySQL Workbench designed in a modular way and is fully scriptable. Whenever you have to perform repetitive tasks or e.g. need to export your Workbench models tailored for your coding environment, writing a plugin to perform this task is the way to go. Python …

I have to admit that FlashCache for Linux looks pretty cool.

It basically lets you use a block device SSD as cache.

Another hack is to mount the SSD as swap and tell InnoDB to use say 100GB of memory. I haven’t tested this but it might be a fun hack :)

We’ve actually migrated away from using SSD in production – at least for now.

The performance just wasn’t THAT great in our configuration. I’m still semi optimistic but not as much as I was a year ago.

I think if I were to do it again I would drop RAID everywhere with SSD and make sure my database layer can correctly route queries to the right MySQL instance.

Each SSD would need to be on its own database server with its own replication thread. …

If you’ve been reading up on the various NoSQL offerings and have wanted to try out one but don’t know how to get started, this is one of the easiest ways. I chose MongoDB for this example because I’m going to start using it for a project that needs features that MySQL isn’t as fast at: namely denormalized data with billions of rows. MongoDB has plenty of drivers for other scripting and high-level languages but I’ll focus on the PHP driver today. If there is interest I can do a write up on Python usage later. This example is limited to CentOS, Fedora, and Redhat 5 servers that use the yum package management system. For more information you can reference their download page: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Downloads

First install the prerequisites:

• sudo yum install gcc php php-pear

Then install the mogo php extension via …

Our Universe is full of ironies. But some ironies are just too hard to take.

As you may have guessed (!!!), I am an avid Linux developer and user. Though once upon a time I did develop under Windows. Yes, believe it. And on one particular case, I got to be on a first-name basis with some of the Microsoft Software Engineers to resolve issues we were having with their OLE crap — what the Holy Gods of Microsoft decided to redub as “Active-X”.

But I digress. For the past 10 years, I have been solid Linux and have defenestrated Windows for the most part. But as you know, you can never really completely eliminate Windows.  Despite your best efforts, it will always be (for now, at least) the 500 pound gorilla in any room you care to be in. The installed software base there is just staggering, and most have no Linux options.

But then that’s why projects like Wine and the many wonderful hypervisors …

Or: “Don’t be a Cnut.”

Yesterday I had a look at the response of the Joomla! community to the news that Microsoft had signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement and was contributing code to the content management project.

You probably won’t be surprised to find that some people don’t like the idea. The speed and vehemence of their rejection of Microsoft’s involvement in the project is entirely predictable, but none the less depressing for that.

The usual complaints were rolled out:

when Microsoft contributes a major product to open source, we’ll listen Microsoft is only doing this to sell more proprietary software

.
Taking those in reverse order: yes Microsoft is doing this to encourage Joomla developers to use Windows. Just as IBM supports Linux to …

Announcing a new beta 10 release of MySQL Workbench. Version 5.2.20 includes new fixes for 49 bugs (P1 – 1, P2 – 7 , P3 – 39, P4 – 2)

A few new tips you might try. Some have been in the last 2 betas – but in case you haven’t noticed:

1. Once connected in SQL Editor – type control-T or command-T to add a new editor Tab
2. In the SQL Editor run a select. Highlight a cell (one with an image blob preferably) and right click (or command click) and select “Open Value in Viewer” or another option.
3. In a results set — select multiple rows — right click and “copy row content”
4. Click on snippets. Click on the selector and look at DDL and DML lists.
5. Add your own snippets selection drop down option by creating an empty file in the snippets folder and re-opening Workbench.

For example on Windows …

C:\Documents and Settings\<your …

VMware and Salesforce.com launch VMforce. Red Hat provides Cloud Access. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# VMware and Salesforce.com launched VMforce, a platform for developing and deploying Java cloud applications.

# Red Hat Cloud Access enables enterprises to use their Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription on Amazon Web Services.

# Canonical announced Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition, Desktop Edition and ISV support.