My So-Called Blog

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.

Comments(0)

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.

Comments(2)

Some people might have lives, but I have a webserver.

I think I’ve now upgraded just about everything (software-wise) that’s upgradable on this machine:

• Apache 1.3.33 -> 1.3.37 (Thanks for hiding the win32 binaries under “Archives” when the *nix version is out in plain view, guys)
• PHP 5.0.3 -> 5.1.4 (This required ditching my old php.ini file and doing a new one from scratch)
• MySQL 5.1.8 -> 5.1.11 (Dead easy, even on Windows - yea, TEAM!)
• Perl 5.8.7 -> 5.8.8
• Python 2.3.2 -> 2.4.3
• Tcl 8.4.12 -> 8.5.0
• BlogCMS .3.4.6 -> WordPress 2.0.4 (The RSS feed was broken, I was getting tired of seeing my posts quoted elsewhere sans formatting, and every time I tried messing with the code, it just got worse)
• Singapore 0.9.11 -> 0.10.0 (The one part of BlogCMS that I still really liked after switching to WordPress, especially after finding that the upgrade fixed most of my outstanding annoyances with the old version of Singapore)
• Cygwin 1.4.16 -> 1.5.21 (Because trying to use DOS as a shell makes me want to bang my head against the monitor until one or the other breaks and puts me out of my misery)

I also invested a few hours yesterday learning some basic ins and outs of Apache’s mod_rewrite, which is a pain to deal with (as is anything when you’ve no idea WTF you’re doing), but the results are quite nice. Especially when you’re getting pings to files that no longer exist following a makeover of your server.

For now, I’ve *cough* integrated *cough* the new gallery by means of an IFRAME, which makes it easy to view in its own window if desired. There’s a Singapore mod for this that I might try out, but it appears to be a pain if you want to use the same gallery both within and independently of WordPress, so I might just leave it the way it is.

I also updated the OS. Why is it, Microsoft, that I can patch 5 Linux systems in less time than it takes for the Windows Update “Checking for the latest updates for your computer…” to finish flashing green at me? And that I invariably wind up rebooting the Windows machine 3 or 4 times, whereas patching the Linux machines almost never requires a reboot - just if and when I feel like upgrading the kernel? I think that’s what I find most annoying about Windows - other than the fact that I’m stuck with a single desktop, there’s no shell worth mentioning, it’s a haven for viruses (an issue that basically doesn’t exist on other operating systems), and that an install of the base OS alone takes 2-3 hours not counting drivers and Windows Update, and only then can you think about installing some apps so you can actually get any work done on the thing - everything requires a FREAKIN’ REBOOT. How on Earth can people consider this “normal”?

I suppose I’d better quit ranting and get some work done on my Linux laptop PC while I wait for the server to reboot. And ask myself why I even still have a Windows machine in the house.

Comments(11)