Hey, dolphins! Ready to test your NDB backup and restore skills?

Q1: You have a large database which takes 3 hours to back up. Insert/update/delete traffic will run during the backup. How do you run a backup so that none of the inserts/updates/deletes which are executed after the start of the backup are reflected in the backup files?…

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Have you ever heard about VoiceXML? It’s a W3C standard that allows you to build web pages that are accessed by voice! It can be used for services like travel tickets selling, hotel reservation, bank account information and so on. In this post, I’ll give you a general view of how to make a basic hotel reservation application with VoiceXML and how to run it using Glassfish and MySQL.

First of all, for VoiceXML applications, we need a voice gateway. I used Voxeo, it’s free and provides you with phone numbers that you can call for free using Skype. All you need to do is create a free account in Voxeo and register your application by informing it’s URL. After registering you’ll receive the unique phone number for your application.

I’ll assume you already know the basics of VoiceXML syntax for the rest of this …

Working with replication, you come across many topologies, some of them sound and established, some of them less so, and some of them still in the realm of the hopeless wishes. I have been working with replication for almost 10 years now, and my wish list grew quite big during this time. In the last 12 months, though, while working at Continuent, some of the topologies that I wanted to work with have moved from the cloud of wishful thinking to the firm land of things that happen. My quest for star replication starts with the most common topology. One master, many slaves.

It looks like a star, with the rays extending from the master to the slaves. This is the basis of most of the replication going on mostly everywhere nowadays, and it has few surprises. Setting aside the …

I didn't want to get involved, but Jan caught me in the tell-seven-things-about-you game. The rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Here are the seven facts about me:

1. Nobody among my parents and siblings speaks any foreign language. On the other hand, my wife speaks four languages, my sisters-in-law at least three each, and my father-in-law speaks seven languages fluently.
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How good are your SQL and/or general coding skills? I have a specific challenge I'd like your help solving. I am not sure it's possible, but I'd love to be proven wrong.