Leaving MySQL (Not Really)
I’ve been a bit slack about writing my MySQL thoughts of late. This would be caused by the fact that, as I write this, I’m now one week into a 12 month leave of absence from MySQL.
Having given it much careful consideration, I’ve decided that the wisest way to survive the current economic problems is by blowing my savings on a year long holiday in Italy. Wait, did I say holiday? Not really. I’m still a Sun employee, and I’m still going to be active in the MySQL community. My dear support customers just won’t be seeing me around for a while. 
I’m looking forward to having time to write more extensively about some of the cool things we’re doing, and what’s going on in the community at large. If there’s anything you’d like to hear about (either expanding on my previous posts, or a completely new topic), please let me know.
Another thing I’d like to do, if there are any interested parties, is to see how companies are using MySQL in their part of the world. So, if you don’t mind showing off what you’re doing and having me write a little bit about it, feel free to drop me a line. All of my current contact details can be found on my contact page. I’m going to be primarily based in Milan, but I’ll be looking to travel around the rest of Europe at some point, so I’d be more than happy to stop by and see you if the opportunity arises.
MySQL and Geospatial Data
MySQL has had basic support for Geospatial Data since 4.1, but has lacked some of the features of the OpenGIS specifications since then. The good news is, this is rapidly changing. Our own Holyfoot has been hammering away at WorkLog #1327, to provide precise functions for our GIS support.
Even better, it’s fast. How fast? Well, the good people at Oki Labs, apart from having implemented several new GIS functions for MySQL, have done some benchmarking, and it’s looking good. If you’ll excuse the cliched comparison to Postgres, here are the response times (seconds) of MySQL GIS vs. PostGIS in Oki’s test:
| Connections | PostGIS | MySQL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1.817 | 0.220 |
| 100 | 10.517 | 0.557 |
Source: http://www.osgeo.jp/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/foss4g2008_okumura.pdf
If you’re interested in checking it out, the source tree (regularly merged with MySQL 5.1) is available here. Have a look at Giuseppe’s guide to running a Bazaar export in MySQL Sandbox.
WordPress Shouldn’t Use nofollow
In my random wandering across the internet today, I discovered that, by default, WordPress adds the rel="nofollow" attribute to links in comments. Now, we all know the original purpose of nofollow, to try and discourage comment spam. This isn’t really relevant to WordPress anymore, though. Akismet has been supported in WordPress for quite some time. Indeed, I noticed that 2.7 comes with it installed by default. I can attest to the quality of the Akismet plugin: out of thousands of spam comments, it has let exactly one through, and I’ve had one false positive.
To that end, I strongly recommend all WordPress users install Akismet, and the DoFollow plugin. All it does is disable the nofollow attribute on external links in the comments. With the help of Akismet, you can safely do this without providing assistance to spammers.
And to everyone who has contributed to my blog in the past, my apologies for giving you your proper due. That has now been remedied.
Open Database Alliance = Awesome
The big news coming from the MySQL Community today is that Monty Widenius and Percona have founded the Open Database Alliance, a group focused on ”unifing all MySQL-related development and services, providing a solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL”.
I, for one, am 100% behind this. I’ve always been a big fan of community foundations being a focus point for development efforts, they work well to bring everyone together, and to provide a sensible foundation to help avoid much of the uncertainty that seems to spring up around MySQL. I certainly hope that the ODA is able to do the same.
Though I do have one question, how does the ODA plan on handling competing members? If you have two companies offering the same service in the same market, which one will the ODA recommend? Monty specifically says that “all companies that are joining the Alliance should bring something to the table”, but it’s a bit difficult to bring something new when there are already several large players in the MySQL market.
I shall certainly be watching the progress of this alliance with great interest, it has the potential to turn the MySQL Community into a large driving force for development and change.
The press release is available here, Monty has written some interesting thoughts about it here.
Don’t Forget to Alter your Federated Tables!
If you’re using the Federated engine, here’s something important to remember (apart from the usual advice of “please don’t”). If you need to change the structure of the remote table, always remember to update the Federated table. If not, when you try to use the table, you’ll get this error:
mysql> SELECT * FROM foo; ERROR 1030 (HY000): Got error 1 from storage engine
This error isn’t really helpful. The problem is, the Federated engine only checks that the remote table structure is correct when it initially connects. Once it has connected, no more checks. When you restart the server, you get a much more helpful message:
mysql SELECT * FROM foo; ERROR 1431 (HY000): The foreign data source you are trying to reference does not exist. Data source error: error: 1054 'Unknown column 'b' in 'field list''
Also, keep your eye on the FederatedX project. It’s still under development, but will hopefully upgrade the Federated engine to being useful again.
MySQL is People!
I went skydiving yesterday. Here’s a short video of me voluntarily leaving an airborne and perfectly sound aeroplane:
What does this have to do with MySQL? Well, over the past few weeks there have been a bunch of conspiracy theories bouncing around. There are various topics, but the two favourite at the moment happen to be Oracle’s plans for MySQL, and the licensing of the MySQL documentation. There has been a long history of conspiracies surrounding MySQL, from Oracle’s original purchase of InnoDB, to our decision to create the Enterprise edition of the server, through to our long and bumpy release cycle.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not making any calls to stifle discussion, I’m a big fan of community input. I was a member of the community before I joined MySQL, and I like to think that I still am. But I would like it if we could at least think about conspiracy theories before posting about them. We’re all people here at MySQL, we have evenings and weekends and lives just like you. Some of us are crazy enough to do silly things like jumping out of aeroplanes. We’re not out to get you, and we’re certainly not planning on turning into some sort of faceless corporate stereotype. We’re here to do what we love, creating and supporting a really good product.
Oh, and how do you know this isn’t some corporate play to make us seem human? Well, it’s 9:30pm on a Sunday night here, I’m yet to find a company who could pay me well enough to be shilling for them. But MySQL happens to be a group of people I like enough to defend them on my own time.
MySQL Workbench: My Impressions
I’ve been using the MySQL Workbench 5.1 beta for the past few days now, and I’m wondering how I designed databases without it.
Okay, so that’s a pretty strong statement, but I’m genuinely happy with it. 5.1 has fixed my main problem with 5.0, in that the EER diagram mode was horribly slow to render, now it’s all nice and smooth. The ability to easily visualise tables and their relationships makes design very simple.
In fact, I really only have one (minor) complaint, the ability to export without foreign keys would be nice. Sometimes you just don’t want to deal with the performance hit.
That’s about it. Go and download the OSS edition for free now, have a play around. Make it your Friday afternoon experiment. I promise you’ll like it.
Extracting a Database From a mysqldump File
Restoring a single database from a full dump is pretty easy, using the mysql command line client’s --one-database option:
mysql> mysql -u root -p --one-database db_to_restore < fulldump.sql
But what if you don’t want to restore the database, you just want to extract it out of the dump file? Well, that happens to be easy as well, thanks to the magic of sed:
shell> sed -n '/^-- Current Database: `test`/,/^-- Current Database: `/p' fulldump.sql > test.sql
You just need to change “test” to be the name of the database you want extracted.
Embed YouTube videos with XHTML 1.0 Strict code
Being a bit of a web geek, I like to keep my sites running in Strict mode for whatever HTML/XHTML version I happen to be working in. So, I was saddened to discover that the Embed code that YouTube gives doesn’t pass XHTML 1.0 Strict, due to their use of the now deprecated embed tag. Happily, there’s a way to fix this. As a bonus, the code required is much nicer than the code YouTube gives you:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" style="width:480px; height:385px;" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/p1QMoQ3jbjc">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p1QMoQ3jbjc" />
</object>You just need to replace the two URLs with the one for your video, and set the appropriate width/height. YouTube’s defaults are 320×265, 425×344, 480×385 and 640×505.
There you have it! It’s a simple as that. And to prove it works, here’s the same code from above:
Yohosie at The Tote, with Boom Pretty
This makes the second show of Yohosie‘s May residency at The Tote, and they’re rocking it.
First band up was Innerspace, with their rather loud wakeup for the neighbours. Sadly, they were a bit too loud for the small venue, I couldn’t really hear their music. Going by the recordings available on their MySpace, I would like to hear them again, but with slightly more favourable mixing. They’ll be playing next at Manchester Lane on the 7th of May.
Then came Boom Pretty. They’ve been absent from the Melbourne gig scene for a few months now, working on recording their new EP. That said, they haven’t lost any of their stage presence. With the addition of Dave on bass, and Nic taking on backing vocals, they’re producing a richer sound than we’ve previously heard.
As mentioned, Boom Pretty do have a new EP that they’ve been working on, and it’s sounding pretty good. The launch is on the 30th of May at The Evelyn, but those of you who are really keen can buy it already on iTunes.
Finally, the headline act, Yohosie. They’ve been a regular on the Melbourne scene for a year and a half now, and have earned themselves a loyal following. With quirky lyrics and an almost manic energy coming from Xani, the co-lead vocalist and electric violin virtuoso, they provide a very entertaining show.
Yohosie are also launching a pile of new material, on the 22nd of May, at The Evelyn. Keep an eye on their MySpace for more details. In the mean time, they still have three more shows at The Tote for this month’s residency. If you haven’t already been, go!
Finally, 2 shakycam videos from the gig!
Boom Pretty, performing their new single Winter Bend:
Yohosie, performing their single Train Song:
More gig pics available here.
Links
Yohosie
Boom Pretty
Innerspace
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Gary Pendergast, noun: Gamer and developer. MySQL, WordPress, web and music geek. Currently employed as a MySQL Support Engineer for Oracle. Can be observed in his natural habit at pento.net, or usually in Melbourne, Australia.
