Virtual and persistent columns are a feature of MariaDB 5.2+, and HeidiSQL's table editor now fully supports them. Just update your HeidiSQL to the latest build to see this in action.



Also, if you are on a MariaDB server, a brown seal icon in the tree and in the status bar now indicates the right server vendor:

Welcome to the MySQL Enterprise Tools team's blog. 

Our team focuses on creating tools for monitoring and managing your MySQL environments. 

Here we will discuss various things relating to the MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL Proxy, MySQL Connector Plugins, and any other things that generally interest us within the team. 

We will also give new release announcements here, and aggregate these within the MySQL Enterprise Monitor "What's New" feed.

Welcome to the MySQL Enterprise Tools team's blog. 

Our team focuses on creating tools for monitoring and managing your MySQL environments. 

Here we will discuss various things relating to the MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL Proxy, MySQL Connector Plugins, and any other things that generally interest us within the team. 

We will also give new release announcements here, and aggregate these within the MySQL Enterprise Monitor "What's New" feed.

Up to recently, to create a CSV export of a grid view, you had several menu items and you had to find the right one for your needs:
- Copy selected rows as CSV
- Copy selected rows as HTML
- Copy ... XML, SQL, LaTeX, Wiki markup
- Export grid rows to file
Only the CSV output was configurable in the preferences dialog - which was not in sight at the time when you did the export.

Now, there is only one menu item left in the context menu of any result grid: "Export grid rows". The new dialog which comes up
- asks whether to copy to clipboard or write to a file
- let's you select the file encoding (ANSI seems important for Excel export)
- offers an easy way to create Excel compatible output, which requires specific control characters, depending on the output target
- displays the row number and the byte size of the rows you are going to export
- shows recently used …

During the Collaborate 11 conference in Orlando Florida, on Tuesday April 12 from 10:15 to 13:00 I’ll be at the Oracle “DemoPod”. I’m told that this is in the Oracle booth, which is Booth#657 at the back of the exhibit hall.

On Wednesday April 13 from 13:00 to 14:00 my talk is “MySQL Oracle and ANSI Syntax”. Session ID = 431. Room = 310A, subject to change. Sorry, Trudy Pelzer won’t be a co-speaker, I’ll be doing this one alone.

Object oriented programming makes it all doable: Setting up a base class for a connection object, and deriving child classes for specific database vendors.

HeidiSQL now introduces experimental support for MS SQL in r3735. How that works? Seamless:
- In the session manager, chose the new network type "MSSQL" and specify the hostname, user and password. All other settings are unused for MS SQL.
- As HeidiSQL allows to have multiple connections open at once, you can of course connect to a MS SQL server and at the same time to some MySQL server.
- Table data can already be edited (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)
- Structure editors like the table editor are highly incomplete yet, just shows a part of the column definitions.
- Once all MySQL specific stuff is abstracted into the above mentioned objects, you will be able to do an SQL export from …

Object oriented programming makes it all doable: Setting up a base class for a connection object, and deriving child classes for specific database vendors.

HeidiSQL now introduces experimental support for MS SQL in r3735. How that works? Seamless:
- In the session manager, chose the new network type "MSSQL" and specify the hostname, user and password. All other settings are unused for MS SQL.
- As HeidiSQL allows to have multiple connections open at once, you can of course connect to a MS SQL server and at the same time to some MySQL server.
- Table data can already be edited (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)
- Structure editors like the table editor are highly incomplete yet, just shows a part of the column definitions.
- Once all MySQL specific stuff is abstracted into the above mentioned objects, you will be able to do an SQL …

Ronald Bradford will be presenting at two conferences in April, the O’Reilly MySQL Conference and the IOUG Collaborate 11 conference. His presentations include:

• Monday April 11 at 3:45-4:45pm in Orlando, Florida – Common MySQL Scalability Mistakes
• Wednesday April 13 at 2:00-3:00pm in Santa Clara, California – Best Practices for MySQL DBAs and Developers Part 1
• Wednesday April 13 at 3:05-3:50pm in Santa Clara, California – …

User fired queries in a query tab are now processed in a separate thread, which makes the GUI responsive while you run a longer query. Many users asked for that in issue #1509, which is finally fixed now. However, there is one follow up issue, caused in one specific scenario - will be fixed soon. Please update to the latest build to check that out (Help > Check for updates).

Second thing is I am searching for a new logo image, including an application icon in sizes of 16px, 32px and 48px. As a non-designer, I recently tried out some of my own ideas but in the end they all feel slightly wrong and ugly. If you have a good idea or even like to create a logo for HeidiSQL feel free to comment and attach files on issue #2332. The new logo should contain some green …

Ronald Bradford will be speaking in New York on March 22nd at the offices of the startup incubator General Assembly starting at 6pm.

His presentation “How better indexes save you money” will be an enlightening experience about how index only improvements to already indexed queries and with no additional code changes resulted in huge performance improvements and significant savings in hosting costs for a client.

More information available at Meetup.com EffectiveMySQL Group.