My So-Called Blog

I’ve written an article highlighting some recent developments with XML support in MySQL 5.1 and MySQL 6.0. Topics include:

• Outputting MySQL data in XML format; includes a look at the 3^rd-party lib_mysqludf_xql library
• Getting XML into MySQL; includes a discussion of the LOAD XML statement (new in MySQL 6.0)
• The ExtractValue() and UpdateXML() functions (new in MySQL 5.1)
• Security issues, including a look at a little nasty known as “XPath injection”

You can read it at the MySQL Developer Zone.

Alexander Barkov contributed a nifty stored procedure and a very helpful pre-publication review. Thanks, Bar!

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Some people have been saying that MySQL will not provide any more binary releases for its Community users, and that from now on you’ll have to build from source or pay up. Say it ain’t so!

It ain’t so.

Yes, it’s true that MySQL 5.0.33-community is a source-only release. However, this does not mean that all future MySQL Community Server releases will be source-only! In fact, we are planning another (probably 5.0.35) Community release in the near future, that will include binaries that you can download from dev.mysql.com/downloads, same as always.

But don’t take my word for it, when you can read for yourself what Kaj Arnö has to say about it.
(Read the article)

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Ross McFarland recently posted to the Cluster mailing list about a Perl binding that he’s been working on for the NDB API. Ross says that it’s just a proof of concept, and at this point nowhere near complete, but is inviting folks to download it and take it for a spin. I’m not a Perl hacker myself, but I’d be interested in hearing your reaction or if you’re doing something interesting with this.

Of course, if you’re working on your own port of the NDB API to some other language - say, PHP, Python, or (heh) even JavaScript - I’d love to hear about it.

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I’ve had an introductory article to MySQL Cluster 5.1 Disk Data published in the September 2006 issue of International PHP Magazine.

If you’re using Cluster or you’re interested in doing so, and you’ve not yet tried out MySQL 5.1, you’ll find that disk data storage makes MySQL Cluster more flexible, scalable, and cheaper to run than MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 Cluster. In the article, I’ve outlined some reasons why this is so. The article covers the basics of creating disk-based Cluster tables, and discusses some Disk Data do’s and dont’s. There’s also some info about some other improvements to MySQL Cluster that are being made in 5.1, as well as some diagrams and sample PHP5 code for accessing a MySQL Cluster. Just in case you’re not that familiar with setting up a MySQL Cluster, I’ve also included a quick setup guide to help you get started.

You can read more about the article or download the PDF version from the International PHP September TOC page. A single issue is €4.00 or you can get a year’s subscription for €42.00.

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If you’re interested in looking at what goes into the MySQL documentation, there’s a new and kind of cool gizmo we’ve just installed that makes browsing the docs sources a breeze. Fisheye lets you browse by project, directory, author, date, and other criteria. It also provides an easy way to get to the complete changelogs, and even provides a customisable changelog RSS feed — for example, this feed has commits for just the NDB API documentation, and this is a feed of (all) my commits to the mysqldoc repository.

The display also features a graph showing how many lines are in a given directory, from which you can see that the MySQL Manual as a whole recently passed the 2-million-line mark. The NDB API docs were up to about 170K, then suddenly dropped off to about 50,000 lines in mid-July. What happened there? Well, that’s when I replaced the Umbrello XMI files containing the sources for all of the class diagrams with tar.gz archives. That’s because I got tired of generating a 250KB commit seemingly every time I changed the signature of one class method. (Now that the NDB API Guide is fairly stable, perhaps I should put the XMI files back?)

Not only is this stuff fun to look at, but I can see where it might be good for my workflow as well, starting with one of my very favourite tasks in the whole world — weekly reports. Until now, I’ve been using Thunderbird and filtering the documentation commit emails… Hmmmm… I wonder if I could just tell my boss to subscribe to the RSS feed now…? In any case, this looks like it could speed up and simplify the process considerably.

Hopefully, it’ll also be helpful to users looking for updates in the docs as well.

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I’m headed to Thailand in September (along with my friend and MySQL colleague Morgan) for an extended working holiday. It’ll be my third time there, and each time I visit, I fall more in love with the place. The culture is fascinating, the food is marvelous, and the people are some of the nicest I’ve met anywhere.

Since we’re planning to be there for a while, we figure that we can take a little time out from work and play to do some Open Source evangelising and networking. We’ve already contacted Open Source Thailand about the possibility of participating in any events they’ve got planned for Software Freedom Day. (Actually, Morgan got the ball rolling on that.)

However, we’re not limited to that particular event. Either one of us (or even both of us) would be glad to meet up with and speak to your group about MySQL, Linux, or Open Source Software in general. We’ll be staying in Bangkok for the most part, but may be able to travel to other places in Thailand. (I’m supposed to be going to Krabi for a week at some point, but I don’t yet know exactly when that will be.) So if you’d like to get together, just get in touch with one of us through the mailing list, and we’ll see what we can arrange.

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