As you may have noticed we’re going for a major milestone on our Workbench 5.1 roadmap. So our resources are pretty much concentrated on this  task at the moment. But it’s just as important to keep improving our 5.0 GA version, so we will reserve the first days next week to make progress here as well. We will publish the next release of 5.0 mid-next-week. So stay tuned for a better 5.0 next week and the upcoming 5.1 alpha later this month.

Before I am leaving for my summer vacation I wanted to share the first screen designs for the Mac version of Workbench. Click on the small images below to view the screenshots at full size.

The first shot shows the new Overview Page. It holds the Workbench Central panel (that can be collapsed of course), the Machine-Group panels and a Notes panel. Each machine tab holds a list of Database Connections and MySQL Models that are associated with that particular machine. (The list of Database Instances shown in this screenshot - which will give you access to administrative features - are a WB 6.0 feature coming later next year).

When you double-click a Database Connection you will get to the new SQL Query interface that is show on the next screenshot. When a MySQL Model has been double-clicked the model is opened on a new main-tab …

Due to summer vacations - yes, even we take some time off - our release-cycle has slowed down quite a bit so it has already been more than 4 weeks since we aired an update of Workbench. Right in the middle of testing and preparing the next build, our build-server has raised the white flag. Looks like the cooling system above the unit decided, that its too hot, and put a cold shower right down on our machine. Our engineers are quickly gathering some new iron and we are meanwhile preparing the build manually this time. There are a few bugs remaining but next package will be ready soon and we put it on our download servers - so stay tuned for the next Workbench 5.0 release.

Quite a few Blog postings pop up recently, let me outline two of them.

Gerry Narvaja talks about multi-page printing by using the MySQL Workbench community edition utilizing the PDF output. Find his posting here.

Weizh posted a nice step-by-step tutorial on how to use Workbench to show differences between two databases. Find it here.

Both workflows get you what you want by using the Community Edition. For those of you who want everything on a silver plate there is the Standard Edition of course, which simplifies these tasks even more.

On a side note: To get more information about the printing topic Gerry …

A common misunderstanding seems to be that the only way to increase the available “paper space” for a diagram is by increasing the size of the paper. But there is another way to do that, which is in the Model -> Diagram Size dialog, where you can set the number of pages your diagram has, vertically and horizontally (perhaps it’s not very obvious to first time users, so we’ll be working on making it more easily accessible).

Another recurring issue is that of printing in the community version. Direct printing is …

We introduced a new library to use with our update-feature inside Workbench. With the new lib (yassl) it’s possible to use SSL encryption for the authentication/download of new SE releases. This was not possible with libcurl because we’re not allowed to use/bundle openSSL. As this update is included staring with 5.0.22 all SE users will have to download version 5.0.22 manually from the enterprise pages one more time. Please logon to https://enterprise.mysql.com/software/gui_tools.php with your mysql username and password, download the latest release and launch the installer manually. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yesterday three groups in the European Parliament (PES, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL) announced their motion for a resolution on patent policy. I published their press release earlier today on this Web site.

In parallel, the Independence/Democracy group in the European Parliament (commonly abbreviated as ID or IND/DEM) filed this motion for a resolution on patent policy. The motion was put forward by Tom Wise, an MEP from the UK Independence Party who spoke out in strong terms against the software patent directive.

The ID motion is materially consistent with the motion of PES, …

Three groups in the European Parliament (i.e., international-level parties) yesterday authorized me to distribute the press release below to my media contacts:

European patent controversy heating up again

PES, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL groups in European Parliament file motion for resolution — Proposal calls for “balance between the interests of patent holders and the broader public interest in innovation and competitive markets” — Commissioner McCreevy’s preference, the EPLA, is seen as weakening EU democracy, increasing litigation costs and “exposing SMEs to greater risks” ? McCreevy to speak in parliament next week, vote to take place in mid-October

On Friday, EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy (whose historical ties with Microsoft and similar companies are mentioned in my book) delivered this speech on his intellectual property rights (IPR) strategy. He flew all the way up to Helsinki for an informal meeting of the ECOFIN (economic & finance) Council of the European Union.

In his speech, he said the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) “is a goal worth pursuing” and that he wanted to involve the EU in the EPLA negotiations “and bring them to finality”. He falsely claims that the EPLA would “offer valuable cost savings”: even Nokia and pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline have already pointed out …

I fixed a couple of typos in my book No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union. Thanks to Marco Menardi for having pointed me to those typos.