The idea of ACID transactions are a basic feature of SQL’s individual Data Manipulation Language (DML) commands, like the INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. Transactions across two or more tables are a natural extension of ACID compliance features provided by DML commands. However, they require a structured programming approach, like a store procedure or like API implemented in an imperative language.

Surprisingly, transaction management wasn’t covered well in Alan Beaulieu’s Learning SQL because he only provided pseudo code logic. While I thought troubleshoot some broken MySQL SQL/PSM logic would be a good learning experience for students, it wasn’t. So, I wrote this sample code to show how to achieve an all or nothing transaction across four tables.

The code for this example on transaction management lets you perform the important tasks necessary to effect transaction …

While you can download MySQL as a DMG package, a number of users would prefer to install it as a Docker instance. You won’t find the macOS downloads on the same web site as other downloads. You can use the following macOS download site.

After installing Docker on your macOS, you can pull a copy of the current MySQL Server with the following command:

docker pull mysql/mysql-server

You should create a mysql directory inside your ~/Documents directory with this command:

mkdir ~/Documents/mysql

Then, you should use the cd command to change into the ~/Documents/mysql directory and run this command:

pwd

It should return the following directory: …

I’m switching to MySQL and leveraging Alan Beaulieu’s Learning SQL as a supporting reference for my Database Design and Development course. While reviewing Alan’s Chapter 5: Querying Multiple Tables, I found his coverage of using self-joins minimal.

In fact, he adds a prequel_film_id column to the film table in the sakila database and then a single row to demonstrate a minimal self-join query. I wanted to show them how to view a series of rows interconnected by a self-join, like the following:

SELECT   f.title AS film
,        fp.title AS prequel
FROM     film f LEFT JOIN film fp
ON       f.prequel_id = fp.film_id
WHERE    f.series_name = 'Harry Potter'
AND      fp.series_name = 'Harry Potter'
ORDER BY f.series_number;

It returns the following result set:

 …

Starting with version 8.0.18 the MySQL Workbench source package finally ships also all our GPL unit and integration tests, which we are using internally to control code quality. For that we had first to replace our old, outdated testing framework by something new and more appropriate. We evaluated quite a few C++ testing frameworks but found them either not to be sufficient or difficult to use. Instead we had something in mind that comes close to the Jasmine framework which is widely used among JS developers. The way it hides all the boring test management details and the clear structure it uses, was quite an inspiration for us and we decided to develop our own testing framework modeled after that.

Casmine – C++17 BDD Testing Framework

Casmine is a C++ unit and integration testing …

In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to test Kubernetes locally on OSX/macOS. Testing Kubernetes without having access to a cloud operator in a local lab is not as easy as it sounds. I’d like to share some of my experiences in this adventure. For those who have already experienced in Virtualbox & Vagrant combination, I can tell you that it doesn’t work. Since Kubernetes will require virtualization, setting another virtual environment within another VirtualBox has several issues. After trying to bring up a cluster for a day or two, I gave up my traditional lab and figured out that Kubernetes has an alternate solution called minikube.

Installation

If your OSX/macOS doesn’t have brew I strongly recommend …

In this post, we’ll discuss how you can quick start MySQL testing using Docker, specifically in a Mac environment.

Like a lot of people, I’m hearing a lot about Docker and it’s got me curious. The Docker ecosystem seems to be moving quickly, however, and simple “getting started” or “how-to” type articles that are easy to find for well-established technologies seem to be out-of-date or non-existent for Docker. I’ve been playing with Docker on Mac for a bit, but it is definitely a second-class citizen in the Docker world. However, I saw Giuseppe’s blog on the new Docker beta for Mac and decided to try it for myself. These steps work for the beta version on a Mac (and probably Windows), but they should work with …

Using Docker for development is a great way of ensuring that what you develop will be the same that you deploy in production. This is true for almost everything. If you develop on Linux, the above statement holds. If you develop on a different operating system (OSX or Windows) there are several restrictions.

I showed one of those issues in a recent article (MySQL and Docker on a Mac: networking oddity.) When you want to export a port from a service running in the container, the exported port is not available in your mac, but in the virtual machine that runs Docker services. This happens with any application that listens to a port.

The second limitation I found affects only MySQL, and it is related to using volumes. The proper way of achieving data persistence with …

Docker has been consuming my life in the last few weeks. I have half a dozen projects in progress that use containers in some fashion, including my Visualizing MySQL’s Performance Schema project.

Since I prefer to work from a Mac laptop, I have to utilize a Linux Virtual Machine (VM) which runs the Docker daemon. Luckily, Docker Machine makes this a very simple process.

However, interacting both with Docker and Docker Machine does introduce some additional commands that I would rather simplify for the repeatable use-cases I’ve come across. With BASH aliases, this is not a problem.

Is My Docker Environment Setup?

When …

What do the acronyms I18N or L10N stand for? What do they mean for developers of mobile applications in particular?

I hosted a session about localizing mobile applications at Developer Week 2014 in Nuremberg. It covers — among other things — text, numbers, date and time, images, and other localizable resources.

See the codecentric blog for slides and some more details.

The post and the slides are also available in German.

One thing that gets tedious in the IT community and Oracle community is the penchant for Windows only solutions. While Microsoft does an excellent job in certain domains, I remain a loyal Apple customer. By the way, you can install Oracle Client software on Mac OS X and run SQL Developer against any Oracle Database server. You can even run MySQL Workbench and MySQL server natively on the Mac OS X platform, which creates a robust development platform and gives you more testing options with the MySQL monitor (the client software).

Notwithstanding, some Windows users appear to malign Apple and the Mac OS X on compatibility, but they don’t understand that it’s a derivative of the Research Unix, through BSD (Berkeley Software …