working with the iodbc driver manager on mac os x has been a frustration on two fronts.

first, the installer api functions provided by iodbc constantly set the configuration mode to ODBC_BOTH_DSN, which means you have to keep resetting it to the correct value after nearly every installer api call. this problem is platform-agnostic — the iodbc code is just plain wrong.

second, when called from the odbc administrator application on mac os x, any failures that the driver reports or passes through from the installer api in registering the driver are ignored, and the application instead uses a generic prompt for dsn configuration.

so even with the first problem fixed, the second problem has led to a lot of tail-chasing until i discovered that the odbc administrator application only obtains enough privileges to write to /Library/ODBC as …

i completed all the paperwork to accept my new position at sun today. now i just need to drop it off at a ups dropbox or have ups pick it up. at least they didn’t ask me to fax anything.

for a hardware company trying to become a software company, you would think the process of “onboarding” would not involve writing your address on a half-dozen different forms.

i will be a “member of the technical staff 4 - software.”

yeah, they say that they are working on updating the titles and such for everyone.

I’m happy to announce that we are finally changing the location for our monthly meetings, from the dreaded University of Houston main campus to a Galleria location.

Alert Logic has agreed to host the monthly meetings at their headquarters (we are next to the Marathon Oil building), so hopefully this will make it easier for people to attend. I’m looking forward to having a real meeting room with projector and wireless internet for a change!

I’ll be updating the meeting details today, but our new location will be the following:

Alert Logic, Inc.
1776 Yorktown
7th …

Since I wasn’t really blogging back then, I forgot to mention that Alert Logic received a great review at Security Magazine in its April 2007 issue. We got a “Best Buy” rating when compared against some of our competitors.

We were all very proud of the new releases of Threat Manager over the past year, so it was very good to be recognized for the work. A perfect score, no less! All 5 stars.

Velocity is the new O’Reilly conference aimed at discussing topics related to scaling web sites and applications on the Web. It seems really interesting, and I will try to attend.

Having access to some of the industry’s experts in scaling web sites will be really useful. In fact, Steve Souders is one of the program chairs of the conference, and he is also known as the creator of the very popular YSlow extension to Firefox.

Just read about the potential performance implications of having thousands of tables in a single MySQL database over at Ask Bjørn Hansen’s blog.

We have that type of setup at Alert Logic, but I don’t remember any problems while shutting down the database server. I wonder if the FLUSH TABLES problem only happens that badly under MyISAM instead of InnoDB?

connector/odbc 5.1.2 was released today. this will probably be the last beta. we have gone back and triaged all of the bugs filed against connector/odbc, and have identified a few bugs that we have to fix before we will release a release candidate, but overall the trend of bugs is very encouraging. there are only a handful of bugs filed specifically against 5.1, and the total number of connector/odbc bugs is down to under 60.

while we start to wind up development of connector/odbc 5.1, i will also be taking on responsibility for libmysql, the c library that defines the client interface to mysql, and the mysql command-line utilities. there are about 120 active bugs in those areas right now, so the first task will be getting that down to a more manageable number.

after that, the field will open up for new development. i know that an asynchronous interface to libmysql is on some people’s wishlist, and there are other areas where i think that libmysql could be cleaned up in general.

but the idea that i think is the most exciting is to build a scripting …

still wrapping my head around this whole sun thing, but i have to say that i am a little excited about some of what i see in sun’s explanation of their benefit package. above and beyond what mysql offers now, there is matching on the 401(k), a stock purchase program, and charitable contribution matching. there is also a tuition reimbursement program.

it does look like i’ll be losing some days off, or at least the flexibility on them (more holidays, less vacation time).

and there is a new employee referral bonus. so if you want to work for sun (or as i suspect mårten will be referring to it, mysql), wait a few months and let me refer you!

I have two talks in the coming few weeks, that I’m still madly writing. I’ve come to the realisation that writing talks, really does take a lot of time (when you have a deadline). Especially, if you’re doing it my style - everytime I write a slide, and find something missing in the Wiki, I go ahead and fix it. So its not actually talk writing I’m doing, but expansion of our online documentation, and keeping it in check. That takes time.

• Enhancing Competitiveness Through Technology - I’m giving this talk at the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) Annual Conference 2007. Their conference is themed around “Enhancing Competitiveness Through Technology & Law Reforms ? The Next 50 Years” and is on the 19-20 November 2007, at the KL Convention Centre. My talk is on the 20th, as I’ll be on a plane on the 19th. This is targeted at CEO/manager level, so is lighter on tech-related content, but more …