This is a simple matter with a simple solution that might help someone save time and confusion. Emacs wasn’t coloring my comments correctly so I went ahead and had it change them to red-italic. If you are having similar issues you can drop the following into your home directory’s .emacs file. Enjoy. Keep in mind that if you are using emacs in a terminal session as opposed to the X-server gui then you will not see the italics.


(global-font-lock-mode 1)
(custom-set-variables
'(gud-gdb-command-name "gdb --annotate=1")
'(large-file-warning-threshold nil))
(custom-set-faces
'(font-lock-comment-face ((((class color) (background light)) (:foreground "red" :slant italic)))))


Looking around on Google for a webpage test script returns a lot of results. Some of them are useful, some are not. In particular, for Python, the scripts on the first page of results are minimal and lacking a useful copy and paste / ready to go script that will answer the question “is my webpage available?”. So I decided to write a quick one that will give you the return code and email you as an alert if the page does not return with a 200 code (successful). You can find the script here. Update: the webserver was trying to execute the script as a .py file so I just changed it to .txt – for it to work you will want to change the .txt extension to a .py extension after you download it.

If you are familiar with Python scripting, this script could easily be modified to post to a form so that you can test a MySQL transaction (or other transactional DB) …

Few days ago, the folks at SQLAlchemy pushed some proposed modification to the MySQL Connector/Python dialect. Before this patch, previous report yielded 72 errors and 11 failures. Now we got down to 9 errors, but the failures are still lingering. Is this an improvement? Yes and no, failures should go down, but there are some SQLAlchemy tests I just can't figure out, yet.. clues are welcome!

Here are some detailed results which also included MySQLdb and oursql. I used SQLAlchemy revision 6788 (i.e. from …

At Fosdem 2010, already two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Geert van der Kelen explain the work he has been doing on connecting MySQL and Python. I don't know anything about Python, but anybody that has the courage, perseverance and coding skills to create an implementation of the the MySQL wire protocol from scratch is a class-A programmer in my book. So, I encourage everyone that needs MySQL connectivity for Python programs to check out Geert's brainchild, MySQL Connector/Python.

In relation to MySQL Connector/Python, I just read a post from Geert …

To far fetched (pun inteded), some might think.. Below you'll find a procedure to get a list of MySQL supported character sets and their collations. The output is Python and can be used to build a (big) tuple.

The problem is that character set IDs in MySQL have 'gaps'. For example hebrew has ID 16, and the next character set in the COLLATIONS-table, tis620, has ID 18. Not a big problem, just a bit annoying. This list is hardcoded in MySQL Connector/Python and I needed something to easily maintain it.

Solutions were using text editing skills, parsing it in Python to produce a list, etc.. But why not a …

Is there a performance penalty using a pure Python database interface? Yes there is. But how much? .. also depends on who wrote it.

I started implementing some benchmarking for MySQL Connector/Python. Main reason is to identified bottlenecks or just plain bad coded. Another reasons: it's cool and the question was raised during my talk at FOSDEM and also online.

Oh, yes, MySQL Connector/Python ain't fast right now. Just compare a script spawning 10 threads opening 1000 connections. It indeed just connects.

mysql.connector 0.1.3-devel average: 0.0091820
MySQLdb 1.2.3c1             average: 0.0026477
oursql 0.9.1                average: 0.0007394

(MacOSX 10.6.2, MySQL …

Dave Edwards has offered me to write this week's Log Buffer, and I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity. I'll dive straight into it.
OracleI'll start with Oracle, the dust of the Sun acquisition has settled, so maybe it's time to return our attention to the regular issues.

Lets start with Hemant Chitale's Common Error series and his Some Common Errors - 2 - NOLOGGING as a Hint explaining what to expect from NOLOGGING. Kamran Agayev offers us an insight into Hemant's personality with his Exclusive Interview with Hemant K Chitale. My favorite quote is:

Do you refer to the documentation? And how often does …

A preliminary schedule is now available for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 (in Santa Clara, California, USA). I have two talks and a tutorial, currently scheduled as follows:

• MySQL Cluster Tutorial, Mon 08:30 on 12 Apr 2010, together with Andrew Hutchings and Andrew Morgan
• MySQL Cluster: An Introduction, Tue 11:55 on 13 Apr 2010
• Connecting MySQL and Python, Tue 15:05 on 13 Apr 2010

Schedule might change a bit, so …

A preliminary schedule is now available for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 (in Santa Clara, California, USA). I have two talks and a tutorial, currently scheduled as follows:

• MySQL Cluster Tutorial, Mon 08:30 on 12 Apr 2010, together with Andrew Hutchings and Andrew Morgan
• MySQL Cluster: An Introduction, Tue 11:55 on 13 Apr 2010
• Connecting MySQL and Python, Tue 15:05 on 13 Apr 2010

Schedule might change a bit, so …

Yes, MySQL has transactions if you use InnoDB or NDB Cluster for example. Using these transactional storage engines, you'll have to commit (or roll back) your inserts, deletes or updates.

I've seen it a few times now with people being surprised that no data is going into the tables. It's not so a silly problem in the end. If you are used to the defaults in MySQL you don't have to commit anything since it is automatically done for you.

Take the Python Database Interfaces for MySQL. PEP-249 says that, by default, …