MySQL 5.5 GA and MySQL 5.6 Development Milestone Releases have delivered many new compelling features to the MySQL users and community for testing, feedback and use.

In addition, commercial customers have access to a number of commercial extensions already included in MySQL Enterprise Edition:

•    MySQL Enterprise Monitor
•    MySQL Enterprise Backup

Continuing the business model of MySQL, we are adding three new commercial extensions to MySQL Enterprise Edition:

• MySQL Enterprise Scalability
  • Thread Pool …

OSCon Data and OSCon videos
The Technocation youtube playlist, as of the time of this publishing has 18 videos, mostly from OSCon Data, is at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE0AEC3980A198DA0

The O'Reilly YouTube playlist, as of the time of this publishing has 84 videos, from OSCon, OSCon Data and OScon Java, is at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=93FC98105B19725C

Note: There are no overlaps in the playlists, so that's over 100 videos from the week so far!

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XKCD (as usual) makes a very good point – this time about password strength, and I reckon it’s something app developers need to consider urgently. Geeks can debate the exact amount of entropy, but that’s not really the issue: insisting on mixed upper/lower and/or non-alpha and/or numerical components to a user password does not really improve security, and definitely makes life more difficult for users.

So basically, the functions that do a “is this a strong password” should seriously reconsider their approach, particularly if they’re used to have the app decide whether to accept the password as “good enough” at all.

Update: Jeff Preshing has written an xkcd password generator. Users probably should choose their own four …

This is a response on MySQL security: inconsistencies and Less known facts about MySQL user grants.

As far as I know the privilege to grant PROXY privileges is also not very well understood. I blogged about that some time ago.

In addion to the already highlighted issues with GRANT replication and grants can very well create an unwanted situation:

master> SHOW GRANTS FOR 'user'@'host'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Grants for user@host: GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'user'@'host' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD …

Reading MySQL security: inconsistencies I remembered a few related experiments that I did several years ago when I was studying for the MySQL certification. The first fact that came to mind is about the clause "WITH GRANT OPTION", which can only be given on the full set of options, not on a single grant. For example

GRANT INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE on world.* to myuser identified by 'mypass';
GRANT SELECT on world.* to myuser identified by 'mypass' WITH GRANT OPTION;
show grants for myuser\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Grants for myuser@%: GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'myuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*6C8989366EAF75BB670AD8EA7A7FC1176A95CEF4'
*************************** 2. row ***************************
Grants for myuser@%: GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON `world`.* TO 'myuser'@'%' WITH GRANT …

Another week of industry hijinks has passed, which means it must be time for another edition of the Developer Week in Review.

Apple offers some cover

After developer complaints that Apple was leaving them out to dry, in regards to the Lodsys patent threats being aimed their way, the House of Jobs stepped up to the plate and announced that they considered iOS developers to be covered by the existing licenses granted to Apple by Lodsys for in-game purchases.

This is a bit of a good-news, bad-news story from an intellectual property perspective, as it doesn't offer any relief to non-Apple developers from the patents themselves. Apple paid off Lodsys, which in a sense increases the perceived validity of the patents. Other non-Apple-based developers (such as Valve's Steam), could find …

Note: This article originally appeared at http://www.messagesystems.com/wordpress/?p=84

Introduction

Anyone who follows the email marketing industry news is no doubt aware of the increasing number of well-publicized data breaches that have been occurring at the various major ESPs. In addition to the major ESPs, there are no doubt a number of less-publicized or even non-publicized data breaches occurring all the time at both smaller ESPs and in-house enterprise senders. The days when most of us in the email industry could watch from the sidelines and shake our heads have surely passed. Henceforth we should all operate on the assumption that we’re either now under attack as well, or will be shortly.

Email marketers have two valuable resources that malicious parties want to capture and exploit: information and infrastructure. …

Welcome to this week's edition of Developer Week in Review. Sorry we're running a little late. We assure you it has nothing to do with the release of "Portal 2."

The wide world of litigation

Another busy week for the court system, courtesy of the software industry. Software patents are back at the Supreme Court, this time courtesy of Microsoft and i4i. Meanwhile, Apple is suing Samsung over look and feel issues related to the Galaxy Tab, while at the same time ordering $7.8 billion USD of iPad 2 components from Samsung this year. This is …

This is your Developer Week in Review, I'm Casey Kasem. Our first letter comes from a software developer in New England who writes, "Dear Casey. My wife just got accepted into the Experimental Psych doctoral program at UNH, and I'd like you to play something appropriate for the occasion." Well, going out especially for you, here's "I'll be Proofreading Your Papers for the Next Five Years, 'Cause I'll Never Split (Our Infinitive)" (Seriously, congratulations Bonnie!)

And you thought that Justin Bieber tickets were hard to score ...

What's the matter, pal? You say you had your heart set on going to Google I/O, but the tickets sold out in 59 minutes? Well, cheer up, because tickets went on sale this week for the Apple …

For those who didn't know it already: MySQL.com was "hacked" last weekend. There also was a report about SQL injection on 2 Sun.com domains.

I haven't seen an announcement from Oracle yet.

More info on:

• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Mar/309
• http://tinkode27.baywords.com/sun-com-sun-mycrosystems-vulnerable-sql-injection/