Open Query

While hard at work, it's important to be visible so people don't wonder if there's anything happening... the open source development model is extremely good for this, things are just public all the time. Some may find this a source of stress or potential embarassment, but I think it's great ...

OpenSQL Camp 2008 has come and gone, and hooray again for Baron who came up with the idea and made most of it happen (but let's not forget Sheeri!)  Events such as these are always educational, but the most interesting stuff happens outside of the organised sessions (and this being ...

If you start with the d6 build, you probably have ourdelta.org in your repo files rather than mirror.ourdelta.org. Since we moved to using download mirrors, you need to update your repo config files. There are redirects in place for download users, but yum/apt-get generally don't like redirects. For details on what ...

This week saw the release of OurDelta patchset d7 build of MySQL 5.0.67, basically a cleaned-up update of the earlier (and first) OurDelta d6 build. The number of downloads/fetches within the first few hours surpassed the total number from the previous weeks. Downloads and yum/apt-get repository fetches now always go via one of our ...

James Purser of Open Source on the Air has done a podcast interview with Arjen Lentz about OurDelta, describing it as "a new distro for MySQL".

Alrighty, my mistake. In the setup of the mirror infrastructure, I stuffed up the server alias logic so that some yum and apt-get requests will be failing at the moment (specifically on the us mirrors). The uk mirror should be ok. Either temporarily override your config for the uk mirror, ...

OurDelta build for MySQL 5.0.67 with patchset d7 is now available, in source (new!) and packaged binaries for RHEL/CentOS 4 and 5, Debian 4.0 Etch, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy) and (new!) Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid). If you already installed the OurDelta repository information, yum update or apt-get upgrade will install the updated ...

This week we've been working on... The re-jigged build system, so we have a single patched baseline source tarball that's then used for all the different builds, as well as being available for you to download and build yourself. Noarch distro rpm for all CentOS to more easily drop repo files into ...

Ideas welcome! General idea... base: Delta symbol (with thicker line on right hand side - a delta it's not a regular triangle), plus one or more of the following: something depicting deltas: incremental small changes; something depicting a river delta: where streams come together before flowing into ocean; something depicting community: people working together, ...

It's been about a week since the initial launch of the first 5.0 packages and the OurDelta website, so it's time for some first impressions and an update on what's going on right now... Immediately lots of hits on the site (from 67 distinct countries), most downloads and repo retrieves started ...

Phoebe (my 3 1/2 year old daughter) and I are travelling "to Europe" tomorrow, for three weeks - should be a grand adventure! (so now you know what Open Query profits get spent on ;-)

Of course we're there to see my family, friends, and expose the Phoebster to a bit more Dutch lingo and culture; she understands it quite well but generally doesn't want to speak it (although she has done it ;-) so perhaps being surrounded by Dutchies (who've received specific instructions to not flip to English - Dutchies are useless for people trying to practice Dutch, any hint of foreignness and they switch to English or another common language) will help. Language = culture = heritage. And knowing a 2nd language is important for development; it doesn't matter much which language but might as well do one that has a connection for us.

While in NL, we might also visit my friend and former MySQL colleague Roland Bouwman; see if our respective kids can play together ;-)

OQ operations will continue as normal while I'm away, the systems are in place and others are round to handle client issues - although I probably won't be able to resist to occasionally check my email and such. Bad Arjen. Or perhaps just a sensible thing to do in a small & growing company. That's my current angle. We'll see.
Merry xmas & happy new year to all!

In the 19th Jolt Product Excellence Awards, our High Performance MySQL book is listed under the Technical Books category. That is so cool!

How I found out: I don't think O'Reilly or any of the authors were notified of this, but I got a Google alert because someone else referred to it (interesting that the Jolt Awards site itself didn't trigger an alert).

I have to admit that I'm actually "caffeine free" at the moment, but I hope Jolt will forgive me for that ;-)

Peter noted that MySQL itself is not one of the database category finalists. It doesn't have to be, but "traditionally" MySQL tends to always be a strong contender in these things. So I agree that its absence is somewhat noteworthy (in as far as the absence of something can be regarded as news).

Just listened to the Net@Night #79 netcast (during my morning walk); this episode has a very interesting interview with Don Tapscott who is the author of "Grown up Digital" (follow-up from "Growing up Digital") and many other insightful books about the online world and its humans. I was going to list some keywords of particular interest, but there's just too much - the whole interview is excellent, go and listen to it already!

My first exposure to Don Tapscott was years ago (must've been around 2003), and quite accidental. I was teaching a MySQL training course at the University of Queensland, and walked past the uni bookstore which had a crate outside with old textbooks and other assorted stuff. I grabbed some useful resources on accounting and marketing, as well as one of Don's books (Digital Capital).

Don has been writing about things since the late 70s. An early observation then was that executives didn't want to learn to type, that was beneath them (they had secretaries for that, right?) and how this would "hinder" the uptake of computer use beyond secretaries (word processing and the like) and programmers. Well, now we know eh, today's executive's Blueberry has a keyboard, even ;-)

Messy gift-wrapping service 'Crapwrap' launched by gadget retailer Firebox

I reckon this is quite brilliant, and I think a nice example of a disruptive offering whereby the existing market is actually overservering the needs of a group of clients. So these guys take "good enough" to a whole other level, and it doesn't even have to be cheaper. Very cool.

And on that note...Dear Santa,
Can I please please have USB pencil sharpener for xmas?
Many of my training students and conference attendees have one of the illustrious Open Query transactional writing implements (with rollback), made from recycled newspaper (tightly rolled up, you can read it while sharpening!) but I actually haven't got a proper USB sharpener for it yet. I would take it with me while travelling, but the main problem has been availability - apparently they're really popular. Perhaps some Santa magic will help?
Thanks!

P.S. I've been really good this year, I've only made fun of MySQL Enterprise a few times.

Apart from lots of interactivity, I tend to use anecdotes and humour when teaching a MySQL training course, as it really helps people to remember.



Sometimes I call something "evil" (no I'm not religious), and attach a little story to it. One example the NATURAL join. It's not a join type (like inner, left outer, right outer), it's a modifier keyword that can be used with any join type, and it directs the way the join is resolved.

Instead of specifying a join condition through ON, USING or a WHERE clause, the NATURAL keyword tells the server to match up any column names between the two tables, and automatically use those columns to resolve the join. For example, if two tables that you're doing a natural join on have a column foo_id, the server would automatically use that column. But of course a server has no idea about context, so it's indiscriminate. There can be multiple columns that have a name which is also used in the other table, they will ALL be used for the join (like a.id=b.id AND a.name=b.name)

I like explicit join syntax, I try to steer people away from comma/WHERE constructs. But NATURAL is a whole other level of evil, because it's dangerously implicit: you can't tell by looking at the query what columns are going to be used! If, at any point, a column name is changed, or a column added in one table, or a column is removed (or normalised away to another table again), the join can (equally magical) break by either including fewer, or more, columns.

Thus I reckon that NATURAL joins are just nasty beyond belief, and I've been putting this to my students: if you ever find a dev using this, a) fire them on the spot and b) tell me about it! Of course there's an aspect of humour in there, but it gets the point across. Have you ever seen NATURAL join used anywhere? Please do tell in a comment!

Late last week Open Query quietly launched its new subscription offering for MySQL support. Essentially, you commit to a number of hours per month for a number of months, and Open Query delivers appropriate resourcing. You can sign up for a minimum of 2 hours per month, and the cost per hour is quite low because a) we prefer to build a long-term relationship with our clients and b) the cost structure of Open Query enables this and we're proud of it!

We've designed this offering to provide an equal arrangement between Open Query and its clients, and to be in line with our vision of education and "optimisation by design" rather than simply trouble-shooting. Years ago, Monty used to describe MySQL Support in terms of insurance, and that seemed reasonable at the time. It's useful to have insurance, but when building a new house or renovating an existing one you'd be mindful of designing things well.

So for MySQL, you can get appropriate training, and engage an external expert to assist with this ongoing process, both through Open Query. Of course we can still help in case of trouble, but I think we can all agree that prevention is best (and cheaper!); another positive aspect of the subscription arrangement is that Open Query engineers will already be more familiar with your application and systems as they regularly look at them anyway - so if there are problems, the resolution process can become much simpler and quicker!

What do you do with your monthly hours, as obviously your needs will vary? Well, you're allowed some shuffling of hours between months, and hours can also be used to sign up for Open Query training days and even on-site consulting. We encourage clients to make optimal use of their hours either with these extra options, or simply by utilising the available expertise. For instance, there is no hindrance for a developer or DBA to shoot us a question while they're working on something, as it won't cost you anything extra! You can also have us do a periodic health-check and tune-up, as well as slow query analysis with recommendations, or more serious DBA-type tasks like setting up or extending replication, backup arrangements, upgrades, and server monitoring. There's a myriad of possibilities, so the hours tend to not go to waste but rather improve your overall business process!

In a nutshell, the whole arrangement is geared to give you proactive assistance. In terms of scope, anything related to MySQL is fine and we frequently deal with most of the LAMP stack anyway. We don't mind if you have lots more servers, use replication, or need advice with queries or schema design for performance purposes. We even have expertise on MySQL 3.23 or 4.0 if you happen to still have those deployed; we know about the old optimiser quirks!

Open Query is self funding, debt-free, organically growing, and profitable since its inception. The business and services are designed to scale out in a fairly linear fashion.

It started with Arjen doing the last lightning talk at OSDC 2008… a quick show of hands on who else had dealt with (or was dealing with) depression. Everybody had a look around, and thus knew that they weren’t alone. Afterwards, there was more positive feedback which continued over email in the days that followed. Someone suggested starting a group, and the same day bluehackers.org was born.

The objective of this initiative is to make visible that there are many fellow geeks among us who are intimately familiar with depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. It helps to know you’re not alone. And it’s not because we’re geeks, but because we’re human. The Australian Beyondblue site is of course an excellent resource, but, because geeks have a specific work environment, there are also particular challenges in dealing with these issues, and that’s where we feel our group can help with additional insights, tips, and posts from others with experience.

Using the logo, we can also make the topic visible at meetings and conferences around the world, ensuring that indeed no geek need feel alone in this, or feel unsupported. They can simply look around and see. Anybody will be able to show their support and understanding, in a kind and non-intrusive manner.

This poll was posted last week on Arjen's blog and is still open for a few more days to receive your vote. The comments on the original post contain some interesting considerations either way, and many in fact non-technical. Anyway, please add your vote, and optionally your thoughts to the comment ...

At the recent Barcamp Gold Coast 2, my friend Steve Dalton showed off Balsamiq Mockups. Cool and useful. The Net@Night #75 netcast (with Amber MacArthur) has an interview with the author, Giacomo 'Peldi' Guilizzoni.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/debates/3394545/Oxford-compiles-list-of-top-ten-irritating-phrases.html

1. At the end of the day (it's a great song though, from Les Miserables)
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect (usually insults follow)
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7 (not uncommon in database-speak either ;-)
10. It's not rocket science

We all use some of those phrases... go on, admit it already! And because we need to get it out of our system, your challenge for today is: use them all in a single grammatically correct sentence...