On a related note, I recently reorganised the MySQL Manual’s discussion of functions in partitioning expressions to get rid of the multiple listings (at Giuseppe’s behest). Now there’s a single Supported Functions list, which we hope you’ll find less confusing and more useful.

• 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!

(It does not cover MySQL Cluster 5.1 Carrier Grade Edition, for the simple reason that MCCGE features are not part of the official mainline MySQL 5.1 release. However, those features will be part of MySQL 6.0 [yes, MySQL 6.0 is already starting to happen, and there are already some cool new Cluster, Replication, and XML features in the 6.0 tree, but I’m starting to get off-topic here…], and there’s a good chance that there will be a 6.0 version of the certification course and book in a year or so.)

In addition to yours truly, the authors include NDB developer Stewart Smith, Pro MySQL author Mike Kruckenberg, and MySQL training course developer (and former MySQL certification exam developer) Roland Bouman. Roland also helped me edit and index. (Did I mention that this is my first official Editor credit? Yay.)

You can order your copy here, and still have time to read it and then get certified on MySQL 5.1 Cluster before MySQL 5.1 is GA.

Two slightly different notations are supported, depending on the context, and what sort of checking you want done on the values:

1. If you don’t want or need type checking, prefix the variable name with $@, like this: $@myvar. However, if you do this, and you make a typo, you’re on your own.
2. To make use of strict checking inside routines, leave off the @ sign, like this: $myvar.

This may not seem like a lot, but it greatly expands the usefulness of MySQL 5.1’s XML functions:

• You should now be able to import XML that uses practically any format into MySQL easily.
• This also makes it much easier to filter for specific rows/columns (or filter out unwated ones).
• You can easily do preprocessing with MySQL string functions like CONCAT(), REPLACE(), TRIM(), etc.

I’ve not yet had time to play with this and come up with some good examples for the Manual, but I’m really looking forward to doing so. Keep an eye out for them in the XML Functions section of the Manual.

The last five or six weeks have been pretty hectic, and this evening (it’s just after 10 PM local time as I write this) represents the first time in that span that I’ve actually had time that’s not been planned out for me in one way or another. At the end of April, I moved out of my place in Brisbane and stuffed all my gear into storage in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, where I rented a post office box that now constitutes my sole legal address for the duration.

That last sentence is actually shorthand for “Two 1,000-km round trips between Brisbane and Coffs in a rented truck loaded with furniture (and unloaded again), mostly by me, costing me about 2 grand and not inconsiderable wear and tear on and protestations from portions of my anatomy whose existence I’d been hitherto unaware of”. When I arrived in Australia just shy of five years ago, I had a rucksack and a couple of carry bags. Where did all that crap come from? By the time I got it all hauled and stored, I found myself wishing that I’d just set it all out in the street and taken a match to the whole lot. I then went back to my empty townhouse and spent a few days cleaning up the place. On the 8th of May, I turned in the keys and headed south to spend a few days with Elly before zipping off overseas. I took my first ever ride in a propellor-driven plane on a rainy and foggy Friday morning (11 May); we took off just before dawn, and I was hoping fervently that the pilot could tell which way was up, since I myself couldn’t really tell. I was pleasantly surprised to land alive and unscathed in Sydney a couple of hours later for my overseas connection. Five years and about a thousand exchanges of “You live in Australia? What’s Sydney like?”–”Dunno, never been there” after coming to Oz, I can now instead say, “Well… It’s a big bloody city with a big bloody airport”. I was there for about 3 hours.

My first post-Australia stop was Hong Kong, where I spent a few days on holiday, in the company of my friend Mei Ching, who acted as my guide and translator. It was nice to see her again. Fortunately, she place she picked for me to stay was in Kowloon and not downtown, where the air pollution was just ghastly. One day, we went up to The Peak and spent the day walking through the park, which wraps around the mountain just below the top. We also visited the temple and gardens at Nan Liang, which is quite a nice place, as well as the Temple of Wong Sai Tin (I will not reveal here what I wished for there, but I’ll be quite surprised if it comes to pass).

Of course, I couldn’t visit Hong Kong and not see the Big Buddha, all (nearly) 100 metres of it. The theme park village and religious prsentations were a little on the commercial/cheesy side; on the other hand, I can’t knock the proprietors for trying to spread the good word of the Lord Buddha. I nearly had my hand squeezed right off during the skycar ride up to the site; Mei hadn’t told me beforehand that she’s quite afraid of heights. I got the chance to pay my respects in the temple at Po Lin Monastery, and we also got some excellent vegetarian fare afterwards in the monastery’s cafeteria.

I made a couple of interesting acquaintances while I was there, including a cab driver who claimed that (over the course of a 30-minute taxi ride, yet) I’d taught him something new about the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and who insisted on giving me a book I’ll likely not be able to learn how to read if I live to be a hundred and fifty. I’m still figuring that one out.

On the 16th, I bade Mei and the Hong Kong Special Autonomous region farewell. I quite enjoyed my stay there — I might have to stop over again on my way back to Oz. I’ll post some photos soon.

[To be continued…]

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.

In the meantime, you can build 5.0.33 yourself. It’s not that hard — really!

On Linux, just unpack the source, cd into the root directory of the unpacked archive, and run BUILD/compile-<em>*</em>, where <em>*</em> looks like whatever you’re running. For me, that’s usually BUILD/compile-pentium-debug-max or BUILD/compile-amd64-debug-max. After that’s finished (takes about 20 minutes on my laptop, a 2.0 GHz AMD64 with 2 GB RAM), just sudo make install. You’ll need gcc and the other common GNU build tools installed, but these come with your Linux distro, right?

For Windows, it’s a bit trickier (at least for me), but can still be done using the free versions of Microsoft Visual C++ and Platform SDK that you can download from Microsoft.com.

For more information about building MySQL from source on any number of platforms, just Read The Fine Manual: MySQL Installation Using a Source Distribution. If you run into problems, you can also ask for help in the MySQL Source, Builds, Binaries forum.

Or get someone to build it for you. There’s no reason why you can’t share — that’s the beauty of Open Source.

So… 2006 was a pretty decent year, with a number of positive changes:

• I got to see my daughter grow up some more. She’s just more amazing every time I see her.
• I got out of the hell-hole of a house that I’d lived in for 3 years. I must admit that I had some mixed emotions about that. I’d lived there longer than I’d lived anywhere since the early 90s. My only child came home to that house when she was born. But I had to get out. I’d become a target for increasingly frequent occurrences of theft and vandalism. My parents were concerned that the time would come when someone wouldn’t bother to wait until I wasn’t home, and would simply “take care” of me if I happened to be round at a time that wasn’t convenient. They were probably right. My current digs aren’t ideal — mostly due to location and the fact that I don’t really need a 3-bedroom condo to house myself and a few computers — but it’s a much nicer place than where I was, that’s for sure.
• Speaking of computers, I got a second laptop PC. (Another Acer — this one’s got an AMD64 processor and will soon boast 2 GB RAM. It’s dual-booting OpenSuSE 10.2 and WIndows XP Pro, both 64-bit versions.) I’m definitely set up for mobile computing.
• Including my December 2005 trip to Stockholm, I visited 7 countries (Sweden, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Malaysia, Cambodia). I really enjoyed Thailand, so much so that I ended up spending a total of about 4 months of the year there and even started learning the language. Something happened to me in Thailand. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but my life and my frame of mind improved greatly while I was there. A big part of it was having a better routine and establishing some boundaries between my work and my personal life. Another very big part of it was that I made some good friends there. I miss them. I hope to see them again soon.
• I got some more work done on my teeth. I didn’t appreciate how much trouble they’d been to me the last few years until I started getting something done about them. Having teeth that aren’t a constant source of discomfort and embarrassment is nice.
• I got my head sorted. I don’t know if I can say that I got my head completely sorted, but it’s certainly in much better shape than in a very long time. I let go of some things that I’d carried round with me for a long time. I learnt to accept some things. I learnt to accept myself, and even to like myself a little. And I think that I found some things to believe in.

As for this year, I’ve actually made a few resolutions, most of which I’ve already started acting on:

• Treat myself better: eat better, get more exercise, maybe drop a couple kilos. Maybe get out and live a little while I’m at it.
• Do something about getting out of Brisbane and closer to where my daughter lives. I’ll get to spend more time with her, and I’ll save money on renting a place that’s much bigger than I need and all those car rentals/train tickets/etc. Maybe it will help me to be a bit better in the Being A Dad department as well.
• Continue to progress in my career, which for now means mostly just keeping my job with MySQL AB (which is simply one of the best things ever to happen to me), and maybe writing a few articles on the side.
• Further my studies in Buddhism, and see if I can’t live it as well as learn it a bit more and a bit better. (Starting with a temple retreat I’m hoping to attend in Bangkok next month.)
• Spend some more time in Thailand and learn some more of the language.
• And there’s one other thing, but I’m not saying what it is — I don’t want to be embarrassed if I blow it. Let’s just say that it’s another thing that’s been part of my life for way longer than need be, and it’s past time that I chucked it. It’s not going to be easy, either, but it really needs to happen (or maybe it’s more accurate to say that it really needs to quit happening).

Anyroad, enough ruminating, except to say that if I can accomplish all these things — or even just most of them — then 2007 ought to be a very good year indeed.

Here’s how I answer the emails: “Even if I knew for sure… I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you“.

If you’re looking for a sure source of insider info, maybe you need to look into actually being on the inside. Get yourself one of those jobs, and you’ll know what I do - maybe even more.

All I can say is that 5.0.26 will very definitely happen Real Soon Now™, and 5.1.12 shouldn’t be far behind.

In the meantime… keep watching those mirrors.

Here’s a direct link that opens in a new window, and without the inline frame, because I made the reductions too … well, not quite reduced enough to fit in the frameset very well.

The photo on the right is Wat Tai, just down the street from here, as seen from a bridge over Soi On-Nut.