I took the chance today to order some books from Amazon today to add to the library. Of course I’m still reading 2 current books Spring in Action and the MySQL Certification Study Guide in order to site the second MySQL Professional Certification Exam.

As with most things, you start off looking or reading on the web for something and you end up completely somewhere else. In this case, it was looking at Linux Software Labs (Australia) at the price of their Linux Distribution CD’s, which lead me to the book Beyond Java listed on their site. …

In the “Australian Technology and Business Magazine” - December 2005 edition there was an article on comparing database products. Here are my comments, which I also plan to forward to the editor.

BTW: I’ve since also found this articles content on another site here. It seems that most if not all is the same.

In response to your cover story article “The Usual Suspects Four databases we suspect your business could be quite interested in.” which appeared in the December 2005 edition, I would have to sum up your article in one word “Disappointing”. Let me provide some feedback from my perspective.

You start by defining a scenario, which is the only approach you can take for a suitable comparision of database products due to diversity of features available in …

There has been a lot of press coverage of MySQL recently, since Oracle’s purchase of Innobase Oy (all your Innobase are belong to us hahaha) in early October, and the recent release of MySQL V5.

Here are links to some of the stories I’ve read

• MySQLs announcement. (link to PDF)
• Charlie Garry’s opinion on Oracle’s Innobase purchase.(link)
• Lisa Vaas’s article on Oracle’s purchse. Lisa suggests MySQL can get back together with Sleepycat and work on an enhanced bdb engine type. One item in the story stands out as flawed; Michael Stonebraker’s quote: “If I were the MySQL guys, I would be terrified that that engine was owned by somebody …

I was asked a few questions by a reporter thru a collegue, here is an extract of the discussion.

1) Based on your initial experience with Oracle Database Express Edition, what are your initial thoughts on the product in terms of meeting developer needs?

Installing Oracle 10g Express Edition was a breeze. (Article). In the past Oracle products have been more difficult to install, however this has gradually improved with the more recent version releases of 8i, 9i and 10g. This easy installation via rpm under Linux, in particular the inclusion of HTMLDB provides an ideal database environment that is functional in just a few minutes. This is an important first step in gaining initial developer support.

With the database installation, the Web Based HTMLDB Interface and a sound amount of developer articles online at the Oracle Technology Network ( …

In lunching with an old Oracle Friend, the topic turned to Oracle 10g Express Edition, and we discussed the pros and cons for organisations. The first thing he asked me was, “Have you tried loading the database larger then the 4G limit yet”. Some People?

In general the consensus seemed that it was viable for a small organisation, good for a startup company to get into a no cost entry solution, but appealing to those venture capitalists as you have a definite growth pattern.

I’m warming to more actively pursing Oracle 10g Express Edition, especially with HTMLDB, and at present while preparing to submit a paper for an upcoming Open Source conference which I hope is accepted, I’ve allocated some time on the significant topic of Open Source Verses Free. Stay tuned.

It dawned on me later in the day to more closely investigate the Oracle RPM installation and where exactly everything went in the FileSystem. I was surprised …

I just noticed today that Oracle has released a beta edition of Oracle Database 10g Express Edition. Oracle must be feeling the pressure from open source databases such as MySQL, and PostgreSQL, just like Microsoft has. Oracle Express is pretty similar to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express:

• Free To Deploy
• Supports up to 4GB of data
• Supports only one CPU
• Supports up to 1GB of RAM
• One instance per server
• Downloads For Windows or Linux - no mac :(
• And is free to distribute with your applications

More Info.

MySQL has supported FULLTEXT indexes since version 3.23.23. VARCHAR and TEXT Columns that have been indexed with FULLTEXT can be used with special SQL statements that perform the full text search in MySQL.

To get started you need to define the FULLTEXT index on some columns. Like other indexes, FULLTEXT indexes can contain multiple columns. Here's how you might add a FULLTEXT index to some table columns:

ALTER TABLE news ADD FULLTEXT(headline, story);

Once you have a FULLTEXT index, you can search it using MATCH and AGAINST statements. For example:

SELECT headline, story FROM news
WHERE MATCH (headline,story) AGAINST ('Hurricane');

The result of this query is automatically sorted by relevancy.

MATCH

The MATCH function is used to …

I have been hearing a bit of buzz about EnterpriseDB latley. I think the main reason is that they just secured $7 million in venture capital funding.

What is EnterpriseDB?

EnterpriseDB is based on the source code for the open source PostgreSQL database server. PostgreSQL is the most fully featured open source database out there, they already support pretty much everything on the MySQL 5 feature list.

What the EnterpriseDB people have done is taken the PostgreSQL source code and added features to make it more compatable with Oracle.

EnterpriseDB 2005?s built-in compatibility features allow most existing Oracle-based applications to run unchanged. If you are building new applications, there is no need to learn new versions of SQL syntax, …

There are lots of ways to select a random record or row from a database table. Here are some example SQL statements that don't require additional application logic, but each database server requires different SQL syntax.

Select a random row with MySQL:

SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 1

Select a random row with PostgreSQL:

SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RANDOM()
LIMIT 1

Select a random row with Microsoft SQL Server:

SELECT TOP 1 column FROM table
ORDER BY NEWID()

Select a random row with IBM DB2

SELECT column FROM table
ORDER BY RAND() 
FETCH FIRST 1 ROWS ONLY

Thanks Tim

Select a random record with Oracle:

SELECT column FROM 
( SELECT column FROM table
  ORDER BY …