I don’t think I’ve ever installed MySQL via .rpm I have always installed via .tar.gz primarilarly because I’m an /opt system administrator from my old UNIX days. so my first experience installing on my CentOS 4.2 (aka RHEL 4).


$ rpm -Uvh MySQL-server-standard-5.0.19-0.rhel4.i386.rpm
warning: MySQL-server-standard-5.0.19-0.rhel4.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 5072e1f5
error: Failed dependencies:
perl(DBI) is needed by MySQL-server-standard-5.0.19-0.rhel4.i386
Suggested resolutions:
perl-DBI-1.40-8.i386.rpm
$ rpm --import /usr/share/doc/centos-release-4/RPM-GPG-KEY
$ yum install perl-DBI-1.40-8
$ rpm -Uvh MySQL-server-standard-5.0.19-0.rhel4.i386.rpm
warning: MySQL-server-standard-5.0.19-0.rhel4.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 5072e1f5
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:MySQL-server-standard …

As mentioned in my earlier post Emulating Oracle Output Functionality, I’ll be speaking at the MySQL Users Conference on the topic of MySQL for Oracle Developers. Here is the second in a series of points regarding current MySQL Stored Procedures and Functions functionality.

• 3. Named Parameters
• 4. Procedure Overloading

3. Named Parameters

Parameters passed to Procedures under normal operations can be considered positional parameters. For each parameter, a calling statement is required to pass the same number of parameters and in the same order. Named parameters allows the user to pass parmeters in the order of their choosing, and also not pass all parameters. …

I stand corrected on my earlier post Emulating Oracle Output Functionality (which I’ve updated) when I made a reference to MySQL catching up. That was not what I was implying, that MySQL had to catchup to Oracle. I was indeed making reference that MySQL is a 10 year old product, Oracle almost 30, and with a far greater historical R&D budget, MySQL as an organisation has for lack of a better term, entered the race at a later time. One could also argue it’s not a race, I’m just using this analogy.

For those that might have thought this in reading my earlier article, I’d encourage you to re-read my updated introduction for my clarification and correction.

The comment was made to me, “Oracle is very good at being Oracle” which is totally correct, and the “MySQL’s market now overlaps that of Oracle, and so there is competition.” Indeed Oracle, as a …

Given a new Linux Installation, the following is my recommendation for installation of MySQL for a experienced software developer giving flexibility in a development environment.

1. Under normal circumstances, most distros include MySQL either in a default server installation or on the distribution CD’s. You should first ensure MySQL is not installed.

2. All products can be downloaded from the MySQL Downloads page.

3. Download MySQL 5.1 Beta - Linux (non RPM, Intel C/C++ compiled, glibc-2.3), this product is close to production release and stable. This also includes both Server and Client as well as provides flexibility in installation location and …

I was asked a simple question today by a collegue who is an experiened Java Developer and Oracle user and had just installed SUSE on his personal laptop, to align closer with his work environment. What MySQL should I install, the MySQL web site has this and this and this?

Simple question, but the answer isn’t as simple, especially when MySQL now has a number of different products encompassing client functionality in addition to the MySQL server.

Oracle got it right with the latest edition Oracle 10g Express Edition (XE). A simple one rpm install that includes the Oracle Server, Oracle client, a Web Based Administrator, Query Tool and Application Development tool. I guess as we are all experienced, the simple question isn’t something we have a some notes on handy, hence the purpose of my entry …

I’m a data modeller. I specialise in this, and for a number of years on large projects I’ve been able to focus on this single task within the System Development Life Cycle of software development for several months at a time. Unfortunately what depresses me the most, is I can’t get a full time position in what I’m an expert in. It’s not a specialised skill that an organisation can use on a full-time basis, unless it’s a large organisation, and quite frankly, Brisbane isn’t a market that can support the diversity of large organisations. (caveat, large organisations that are proactive in software development, not just large organisations that have significant IT requirements, but do not work proactively). This is why I can also do Software Development, Database Administration, and even System Administration. Again, I’m not good enough to fill one of these positions in a larger organisation as an expert, but I can generally hold …

As part of my using JMeter for the purpose of testing a new Transactional storage engine PBXT for MySQL, I’ve been investigating the best approach for handling transactions. Read more about earlier decisions at my earlier post Testing a new MySQL Transactional Storage Engine.

I found that the JMeter JDBC Sampler only supports SELECT and UPDATE Statements, and not calls to stored procedures. This is just one approach I’m considering taking.

Well, I guess it’s time to contribute code to an Apache Project. I’ve modified code and logged bugs before for Tomcat, but this will be my first attempt …

Updated 28-mar-2006
There really is no way to do a comparision by numbers in features and functionality when it comes to Oracle and MySQL in the area of Stored Procedures and Triggers. Oracle does provide a far greater and extensive features list, however having more only means it has more.

We all know this, MySQL is a growing evolving database product, having just celebrated it’s tenth anniversary, Oracle on the other hand, will next year be 30, and has had significant funding in R&D being up until recently the second largest software company world wide. However, being open source, MySQL has the advantages of being lean and mean, providing only …

Like I said yesterday I downloaded the IDE and played with it a bit. Note that its quite a hefty download if you go with the "all-in-one" package (so pick your mirror wisely!). But I kinda like software that you just unzip and go.

The highlighting is nicely done. The interface looks nice, although there are way too many buttons that I do not know what they do (and I assume a lot of them will never be relevant for a PHP developer).

The same goes for the settings. I looked them through a couple times but did not find such basics things as being able to show all characters including whitespace (I have become so used to this that I just cannot read code without seeing the whitespace) or changing tabs to become 4 spaces (you can set the tab width though). The #eclipse channel also seems to suffer from a huge imbalance of questions to answers.

I should probably get …

Today I was musing about how great \c is, and how it seems that many people are not aware of it, even though it’s in the banner of MySQL, and has been for a while.

So I decided to see what else I could find. I typed \h and found that a simple \W will show all warnings automatically after a query. That is great for the commandline interface! Now I just have to figure out if it’s possible to automatically do a \W (or “warnings”) whenever I log in with the commandline client.