The latest from the MySQL community

Today from Slashdot:
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/12/27/1953245.shtml

From Boing Boing:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/26/netgears-tiny-networ.html

First thing, 1TB drives are still too expensive. At around ~120 for a 500gig drive compared to ~$350 for a 1TB drive, bang for your buck still comes from buying 500gig drives.

For enclosures?

I like the concept of NAS, but the price point is not there. Netgear upped the price on the ReadyNas devices. The cost for one barebones is now around ~800. You can get cheaper NAS like what Synology (http://www.synology.com/enu/index.php) is selling.

My problem with Synology? They …

This release contains bug fixes and new features. The biggest new feature, in my opinion, is a new sync algorithm for mk-table-sync. Now you can sync any table with an index more efficiently than previously. This is the return of the speed I promised earlier. (Though I haven't yet benchmarked it; I am very short on time these days. Your benchmarks and other contributions are welcome).

I'm finally feeling like the table sync tool is getting in good shape!

Changelog etc is in the full article.

I recently ranted that Sun JRE installs /usr/java/jre*/lib/zi/, a nearly complete timezone database in it's own java-ish format, instead of using the Olson database in ZIC format in /usr/share/zoneinfo/.

It turns out that MySQL does the same thing, it installs a set of MyISAM tables with the TZ database.

It won't be too hard to write a read-only storage engine that reads the /usr/share/zoneinfo/ ZIC files, and presents tables that "look" just like the currently used tz tables, basically doing what mysql_tzinfo_to_sql does, only "live".

When I first heard about the mysqlnd project at the MySQL Camp in 2006, somehow I thought it was going to be 100% PHP code. I can't remember now if I was making an incorrect assumption or if they planned to write it in PHP but changed their mind.What we have today is a DLL that is a drop-in replacement for libmysql. This has a few nice advantages. It means the replacement library will be

Divide and Conquer --Gaius Julius Caesar

Table partitioning in data warehouses is used to divide a large database table into smaller physical tables called partitions1 that are easier to manage. The partitions still retain a single logical view for the user query execution. Range partitioning by date facilitates historical ETL processing and trend reporting:

1. ETL: Only current partition is impacted for load and index rebuild, the downtime is minimized as new data is rolled in while old data is rolled out
   
2. Querying and Reporting: Only relevant partitions are read based on the query's where clause, there is a significant improvement in response times
   

ETL

In a properly designed star …

This package is one of the many parts of the JasperSoft BI solution. I'm currently evaluating the JasperServer and below are my comments.

1. The documentation for JasperServer is terrible. Unlike other documentation which assumes that you don't know anything, JasperSoft assumes you know their stuff already. Because of this, it is quite hard to understand.

2. iReport which is the GUI interface to create JasperReport looks cool but I can't seem to get it working with JasperServer. Again, because of poor documentation or none at all. Oh wait! There is documentation which I think can be found in the 'JasperServer Ultimate Guide' which you have to buy for $50. Hmm, maybe a good way to make money for open source company. Create a nice looking open source software, but sell the documentation. Sweet!

3. I almost forgot this... when I was installing JasperServer, typically you would expect that if you have an …

The Economist makes three technology predictions for 2008, two of which concern web surfing and the third of which concerns everyone, whether they surf the web or not. The Economist's third prediction is that the technology world will open up:

The embrace of "openness" by firms that have grown fat on closed, proprietary technology is something we'll see more of in 2008....

Pundits agree: neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs. With open-source software maturing fast, Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL, Evolution, Pidgin and some 23,000 other Linux applications available for free seem more than ready to fill that gap. By some reckonings, Linux fans will soon outnumber Macintosh addicts. Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud.

What's most …

This is a follow-up piece to an earlier rant:

We are hitting a few walls with a CouchDB deployment and both Damien and I are a bit puzzled. This posting tries to attract someone with a clue to help us out. Our problems might result from not understanding the documentation correctly, but with evidently inaccurate material, we stand little chance

Long story short: We’ve got it all sorted out.

Memory Hogging Spidermonkey

Sam Ruby relayed a hint by “a Mozilla Developer”. Invoking Spidermonkey with the -b parameter and a value of 1000000, we are able to keep the memory footprint constant. We haven’t measured how this impacts performance, though.

Crashing …

This is a follow-up piece to an earlier rant:

We are hitting a few walls with a CouchDB deployment and both Damien and I are a bit puzzled. This posting tries to attract someone with a clue to help us out. Our problems might result from not understanding the documentation correctly, but with evidently inaccurate material, we stand little chance

Long story short: We’ve got it all sorted out.

Memory Hogging Spidermonkey

Sam Ruby relayed a hint by “a Mozilla Developer”. Invoking Spidermonkey with the -b parameter and a value of 1000000, we are able to keep the memory footprint constant. We haven’t measured how this impacts performance, though.

Crashing …