I recently granted ALTER access in MySQL so a user could run the ALTER TABLE command . However after I granted the necessary privileges, the user was still not able to perform the tasks needed. Reproducing the issue using a test instance, I granted a test user the required privileges and MySQL reported no errors or warnings when the ALTER TABLE was run:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 15
Server version: 5.1.41-log MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> grant alter,create,insert on *.* to 'test'@localhost;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> show warnings;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

mysql> show errors;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

mysql>

The reason I granted the addition CREATE and INSERT privileges is that according to the MySQL documentation ( …

I've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating as we enter a new year. Sun has still not released the MySQL documentation under the GPL license, or any other free license. It's still not legal to modify and republish the database documentation. This hurts projects like XtraDB, MariaDB, Kickfire, Infobright and other companies which either have forked the GPL licensed version of MySQL, or entered into a proprietary license agreement with Sun.

These companies can't update the documentation to reflect the changes and enhancements which they have made to MySQL. I can't take the docs and publish changes or annotations without violating the license agreement for the docs.

If Sun wants to claim that MySQL is true open source then they must open source the documentation. If Oracle wants to claim that there is plenty of competition in the database market, they should be forced to open source the documentation. …

I would like to welcome everyone to the new InfiniDB CE home at InfiniDB.org!

We have been working hard on creating this community to be both informative, easy to navigate and built with functionality to let all of the users have and give their feedback. If there is any sugestions you may have please stop by the forum and make a post in the "Suggestion Box".

To get to the forums, just go to the dropdown menu under "Community" and it is the first link you will see - "Forums".

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I would like to welcome everyone to the new InfiniDB CE home at InfiniDB.org!

We have been working hard on creating this community to be both informative, easy to navigate and built with functionality to let all of the users have and give their feedback. If there is any sugestions you may have please stop by the forum and make a post in the "Suggestion Box".

To get to the forums, just go to the dropdown menu under "Community" and it is the first link you will see - "Forums".

Read More...

I just discovered today in the MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual a handy set of additional indexes in the System Navigation section.

• Index
• Standard Index
• C Function Index
• Command Index
• Function Index
• INFORMATION_SCHEMA Index
• Transaction Isolation Level Index
• JOIN Types Index
• Operator Index
• Option Index
• Privileges Index
• SQL Modes Index
• Status Variable Index
• Statement/Syntax Index
• System Variable Index

Perhaps they have been around for some time and I’ve not noticed, but there are much better then searching when you know the content type as per the index list on what you are searching for.

In the MySQL Community team, our charter is to serve the MySQL community — new and old MySQL users alike. One of the ways we do this is by facilitating information exchange between community members, where the new can learn from the old.

And there’s been lots of that information exchange going on, such as over mailing lists (in the early days the dominant vehicle), forums, and Planet MySQL.

One problem with this information exchange has been its ephemeral nature. The same questions pop up for many new users, and should they for some reason not be amongst the issues solved in the MySQL documentation, chances are you’ll have to know quite precisely what you’re looking for when coming up with your Google search phrases. Of course, browsing Planet MySQL is a great way of keeping up to …

I think many people truly realized how much they take the MySQL documentation for granted during the recent multi-hour outage from mysql.com’s data center. Apparently there is a lot of FUD floating around about the legality of mirroring the documentation, as presented by Justin Swanhart and asked by Mark Callaghan.

The manual page at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/copyright-mysql.html says:

You shall not publish or distribute this documentation in any form or on any media, except if you distribute the documentation in a manner similar to how Sun disseminates it (that is, electronically for download on a Web site with the software) or on a CD-ROM or similar medium, …

As you may or may not know, long long ago (in this universe) I used to be the MySQL documentation team  Yes, a team of one. This was 2001. It was a great and interesting time. The current much extended team is doing a great job with the now much bigger set of docs!

Today, I find myself disagreeing with my former colleagues on one particular aspect, namely its licensing. You see, the documentation has never been released under an open license, it used to be plainly copyright all rights reserved, and later some rights were granted to distribute the docs together with the server.

Statements made earlier by Karen Padir regarding possible opening up of the docs license filled us with hope. Then, Stefan Hinz (the current docs team lead) wrote a blog entry MySQL documentation: no license change. Some of the arguments there we can …

By now many folks know that MySQL documentation is not changing its license. This is an issue with many sides, but before I go through them, I want to address a comment made by Masood Mortazavi:

People who are interested in forking the server — and potentially interested in creating what is in effect separate communities of their own — should probably develop their own docs for their own forks.

(There is a cost involved here, I know. However, it should be a cost worth paying if developers of forks really believe in their work. MySQL AB certainly paid that cost in developing the docs while it had already made the code itself freely available under GPL. So, the playing ground among all forks, etc., …

In a blog post today, Stefan of the MySQL documentation team says that the MySQL documents will not be open sourced. Now, I have to go back and review the MySQL CE Keynote that Karen gave, but I'm pretty sure she said to the audience that it was "going to happen". Why would she even bother bringing it up in the keynote if it was never really being considered anyway? There has been little community input on this, and I for one am outraged that a GPL product would not release the documentation as GPL too.

I'm now totally convinced that MySQL does not understand, and will never understand the MySQL community.

Is this an opportunity for Oracle to try to stall community participation in MySQL? I don't want to be paranoid, but this could just be the hints of bold new changes in MySQL strategy, especially considering Karen's …