MySQL has a stored procedure language. People have told me how bad it is, how inefficient, how it had to be there to make MySQL appear more professional. Yes, it’s far from perfect, it’s not pre-compiled so not necessarily any faster than running single statements by hand. However, it works and you can do many useful things with it. The complaints however miss the point of stored procedure languages as used inside a database. They are generally used for 3 things:

1. To hide the implementation from the database user, so that the implementation can change but the interface remains stable.
2. To simplify the DBAs day to day tasks of maintaining the database.
3. To speed up complex queries.

While MySQL doesn’t excel at point 3, it can be used in the other two cases. I’ve used Sybase for quite a while and many maintenance tasks could be fully programmed inside the database, just as you would write a …

Learn how to extend your existing MySQL based website to leverage the power of MySQL variants, AWS cloud based MySQL deployments and RDBMS alternatives. Evaluate how to integrate and use these different various technologies such as MySQL based variations KickFire, a column based optimization and InfoBright, a data warehousing solution. Understand the means of approach towards data synchronization between various database solutions in your business.

At the MySQL Meetup in New York this month, I spoke on “Extending the MySQL Data Landscape“. A MySQL centric view on an earlier work, “The Data Landscape” which I presented at a recent GoDaddy Tech Day.

You can download the presentation on my Presentations page.

Developer.Com has selected MySQL Workbench as the best database tool of 2009!

Competing behind Workbench were:

• Altova DatabaseSpy® 2008
• LINQ (Microsoft® .NET Language Integrated Query)
• SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services
• Oracle SQL Developer

Developer.Com has selected MySQL Workbench as the best database tool of 2009!

Competing behind Workbench were:

• Altova DatabaseSpy® 2008
• LINQ (Microsoft® .NET Language Integrated Query)
• SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services
• Oracle SQL Developer

Developer.Com has selected MySQL Workbench as the best database tool of 2009!

Competing behind Workbench were:

• Altova DatabaseSpy® 2008
• LINQ (Microsoft® .NET Language Integrated Query)
• SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services
• Oracle SQL Developer

Next Tuesday (27th Jan), I’ll be speaking at the London OpenSolaris User Group again. For those that follow the LOSUG meetings, we normally the third thursday of the month, but due to the overwhelming popularity of the event this month (more 100 registrations so far) we have had to push the event back to the last Tuesday of the month.

This month, I’ll be talking about the DTrace probes that we have added into MySQL and demonstrating their use and functionality. Along the way I’ll also cover some of the internals of MySQL and how it works (and how they relate to the DTrace probes we’ve added), how to use the probes to analyze and diagnose your queries, and how I’ve already used the DTrace probes to provide information up to the Query Analysis functionality within …

We've now concluded our call for papers for the MySQL Developer Room at FOSDEM 2009 in Brussels, Belgium, which will be open on Sunday, 8th of February from 09:00-17:00.

We received some excellent proposals and I am very excited about the schedule. Here's the quick summary of the talks:

• Vladimir Kolesnikov: Practicing DBA's Guide to the PBXT Storage Engine
• Kris Buytaert: Monitoring MySQL
• Geert Vanderkelen: MySQL Cluster
• Roland Bouman: MySQL 5.1 Plugins
• Kaj Arnö: MySQL, powering and using Social Networks
• Ewen Fortune: Percona MySQL patches and the XtraDB storage engine
• Giuseppe Maxia: Boost performance with MySQL 5.1 partitions
• Jurriaan Persyn: Database Sharding

See the …

We've now concluded our call for papers for the MySQL Developer Room at FOSDEM 2009 in Brussels, Belgium, which will be open on Sunday, 8th of February from 09:00-17:00.

We received some excellent proposals and I am very excited about the schedule. Here's the quick summary of the talks:

• Vladimir Kolesnikov: Practicing DBA's Guide to the PBXT Storage Engine
• Kris Buytaert: Monitoring MySQL
• Geert Vanderkelen: MySQL Cluster
• Roland Bouman: MySQL 5.1 Plugins
• Kaj Arnö: MySQL, powering and using Social Networks
• Ewen Fortune: Percona MySQL patches and the XtraDB storage engine
• Giuseppe Maxia: Boost performance with MySQL 5.1 partitions
• Jurriaan Persyn: Database Sharding

See the …

MySQL replication is quite different to replication on other DBMSes I’ve used (Sybase). It’s pretty easy to setup, it’s quick and solves many problems.  However one thing it can’t do which frustrates me enormously is provide the ability to replicate the contents of multiple source databases into a single destination database.  I’ve used this type of functionality before, mainly to allow independent nodes to replicate to a central reporting node.

However, MySQL has almost all the funtionality to do this already. It’s just built into the mysql daemon, mysqld, and not separate from it.

The functionality is there: connectivity to a master (the existing I/O thread), the storage of the replication changes and connectivity to the local db. It’s this last part which currently is part of the mysqld and is not able to talk to an external mysqld. If this were possible you could have a separate mysql …

Everyone and their mother are throwing out their predictions for 2009 nowadays, itâ€s a new fad. Itâ€s like youâ€re not cool anymore if you donâ€t have twitter, a Mac, and a set of random predictions for the next 12 joyous months.

So I decided to throw in a few ideas of my own to be part of the cool crowd again (how much cooler can I be already, you might think, and I wouldnâ€t blame you).

Disclaimer (read it, tough guy)

What this post is:

• about the future of technology and the Internet, 2009 and beyond.
• my ideas on what is going to happen or should happen. If they happen to match someone elseâ€s ideas – it doesnâ€t mean I ripped them off, it just means we share the same opinions and theyâ€re more likely to come true.
• awesome.

What this post is not:

…