I’m a keen advocate of MySQL. However, while I use it and promote it within my limited IT circles, I often wonder how MySQL can get better traction and exposure, especially within both the industry sectors and physical locations where I am presently.

This presents a dilemma, it’s almost like the term that has been used in Venture Capital, and in the well named book, Crossing the Chasm. I see and believe that MySQL already has good penetration within certain industry sectors, specifically Internet Based, Startup Based, or Small Based segments. However, I’m sure within other commercial sectors, MySQL has either a token exposure or little to no exposure at all, at least in the circles I mix with.

So how can MySQL the product and MySQL AB the company get both better exposure and …

I’ve started now to actively use more of the MySQL Workbench, MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Migration Toolkit. I am traditionally a very command line person, and it’s important that these skills are never put on the back burner. For all those budding Developers and DBA’s you need these skills, expecially for any MySQL Certification.

To indicate my indent, I’ve even created a new blog category specifically for MySQL GUI Products.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Mike Zinner from MySQL AB really …

Time to Upgrade my WordPress Blog software from Version 1.5.2 to Version 2.0.2 after my latest spam attacks and Combating Blog Spam attempt.

Here is what I did.

cd /home/arabx/www
tar cvfz blog.backup.20060520.tar.gz wordpress-1.5.2
mysqldump -uroot -p arabx_blog > blog.db.20060520.sql
mv blog.*20060520* /u01/backup   # Not in my WWW
scp blog.*20060520* to@someplacesave:/backup
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
mv latest.tar.gz    wordpress-2.0.2.tar.gz # I really hate unversioned files

Disable Plugins. You had to do this manually from the Admin interface (I’m sure it’s just a SQL statement).
Goto http://blog.arabx.com.au/wp-admin/plugins.php

Now some more work.

tar xvfz wordpress-2.0.2.tar.gz  # creates a wordpress directory
mv wordpress wordpress-2.0.2
ln -s wordpress-2.0.2 blog
cp wordpress-1.5.2/wp-config.php wordpress-2.0.2 …

So, I try to answer questions on the mysql users list. It usually frustrates me, but I also want to help. And often, I learn things.

My 2nd biggest pet peeve is that people don’t think to Google their findings. Or even “MySQL” their findings. If you have a short phrase or word, type the following into your address bar and MySQL does the right thing:

http://www.mysql.com/short word or phrase

try it:

http://www.mysql.com/replication
http://www.mysql.com/insert syntax
http://www.mysql.com/can’t%20connect

The bigger pet peeve I have is that people are AFRAID. They shake in their boots if there’s something they don’t understand. This is why there are such things as test servers. Most …

I don’t get to the MySQL Developer Zone main page often enough. In thinking about what pages I view everyday or regularly, it doesn’t rate as high as Planet MySQL, MySQL Forums or even the MySQL Forge.

I was most dissappointed in the results of a recent poll What did you think of the 2006 Users Conference?. The top response was I had no idea there was a Users Conference. That’s not good to see this.

An interesting poll What are you most looking forward to at the MySQL Users Conference (April 24-27)?, the clear …

I am getting closer to finally holding a university degree in my hands. I am now all through with exams. Well admittedly I still need some signatures, but I trust the two professors in question to keep their word.

So now I just need to finish writing my thesis paper. But things are looking good there as well. I have the bulk of the literature search done and I have read most of the material. I will probably try to catch a few of you readers on planet OSDB for an interview, but more on that when the time is ripe.

In preparation of the post-degree times, I met up with one of those financial advisors that hunt down comp sci students at the uni campus. Its quite easy to see through their standard propositions, analogies and pretty diagrams. But they do know a few things here and there that are interesting. They also know some aspects of what the market is like (note sure if they …

At MySQL we believe quite a lot in peer review - after all, we are open source! I read this comment about some cluster tutorial slides and thought it was quite funny

in the split brain and some other picture there is a grayed-out blotch in the middle which looks like a contraceptive device for copulating clams - what is it?

OK, back to killing bugs.

Edit: apparently as I was writing this, Dave put out the call for others to write their own. So, I *have* been asked….

I find Dave Rosenberg’s “How I Work” series fascinating, so I thought I would post how I work, and some tips I’ve picked up along the way.

I enjoyed How Brian Aker Works the best, mostly because some of the ideas were new and fresh to me — for example, polling e-mail every 30 minutes (and thinking about moving to once every hour).

Now, most people I know would say “But I MUST respond to e-mail, the faster the better!” To that I say, “What if you were in a meeting?” Most people will call if they want an immediate answer, and if you’re truly in a meeting, they’ll leave a voicemail …

This falls under “I knew I could do this but I didn’t realize I could apply it this way!”

You can do

SELECT 1 from table1;

Which will return n rows, each row having 1 field whose value is 1. n is the number of rows in table1.

SELECT "string" from table1 works similarly.

However, I never considered using

SELECT "string" as "debug statement" to debug code.

For instance,

mysql> SELECT "SELECT foo from bar where baz>0" as "debug";;
+---------------------------------+
| debug |
+---------------------------------+
| SELECT foo from bar where baz>0 |
+---------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Neat trick! This is why I follow the MySQL Users general list, because every so often a gem like this comes up. Plus, I can’t resist helping folks out. And if …

Finally!

ChangeSet
1.2396 06/05/12 12:50:50 gluh@eagle.intranet.mysql.r18.ru +12 -0
WL#3015: Logging Improvements - No Restarts(ver N3)
Added slow_query_log & general_log global upadatable variables.
Added slow-query-log & general-log startup options.
Added log_output, log_path, log_slow_queries_path global updatable variables.

http://lists.mysql.com/commits/6279

Now we can do things like “SET GLOBAL general_log = ON;” and “SET GLOBAL log_path=’/log/tmp.log’;”.

This has been something long requested so it’s great to see this slip in to the tree in time for 5.1!