This is the 148th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome.

PostgreSQL

Since PGCon ‘09 has concluded not long ago (and not far away), let’s start with Postgres stuff, much of which has to do with the convention.

Here are Robert Treat’s reflections on PGCon 2009, on his zillablog: “ . . . PGCon always presents the strongest line up of Postgres information available, and this year was certainly no exception.”

Josh Berkus was there, of course, and he sends two detailed reports: …

Welcome to the 147th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Let’s start this week, with blogs from the SQL Server world, where a number of excellent technical posts appear. Alexander Kuznetsov surprises his readers with this assertion: without ORDER BY, there is no default sort order. “Sounds trivial? Right, but different flavors of this myth still persist.  . . .  Because apparently many visitors agreed with this myth, I decided to post a repro script which demonstrates that this is simply not true.”

In their post on …

Hello and welcome to the 146th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. I have to make this a quick one, but I hope (as always) that the links give you the highlights of this week’s blogs.

Oracle

Let’s start with Jonathan Lewis’s report from IOUG Day 4: ” Not so much a little gem today as a little surprise and a few consequential thoughts. In a presentation on optimising star transformations the presenter pointed out that bitmap indexes are only available in Oracle Enterprise Edition.”

Here’s Doug Burns with the first of a series on …

In the wake of Meetup.com changing their sponsorship agreements, Technocation, Inc., an international not-for-profit group, has set up a fund for user group sponsorships. You can use the button below to donate any amount of money in US funds via PayPal:

(all monies sent through that button will be earmarked as a directed donation to the “User Group Fund”. In the interest of not cluttering up this blog post with a Donate button for each currency, you can use PayPal to send funds in *any* currency to “donate@technocation.org”. Just be sure to specify if you want the money to go to specifically to the User Group Fund.*)

Note that meetup.com’s fees are $144 per year ($12 per month).

Four years ago, MySQL and Meetup.com entered into an agreement. I have no idea of the details of this sponsorship, though from reading in between the lines, I believe the sponsorship was an in-kind sponsorship — that is, …

A year ago, the outline was being written. A lot of work was crammed into the intervening months, and I am happy and proud to announce that the MySQL Administrator’s Bible has been published, and is sitting on the shelf at many major booksellers already. The official publication date is today — Monday, May 11th, 2009 — although some stores have had copies for a week, including Amazon.com.

The MySQL Administrator’s Bible, published by Wiley Press (available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Administrators-Bible-Sheeri-Cabral/dp/0470416912/, fully covers how to administer MySQL 5.1. It is suitable for people new to MySQL, although as an experienced MySQL DBA I can say that I learned a lot while researching and writing this book, and I believe that even veteran DBAs can learn from this book.

This book for …

Welcome to the 145th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

MySQL

Since MySQL was surely the belle of the bloggers’ ball this week—why, everyone was talking—let’s begin with it.

Baron Schwartz started something with his post examining why MySQL might not benefit from having a mother ship. Dean Ellis of niflheim responded, arguing that everyone needs the MySQL mothership. And that got Sheeri’s Cabral’s attention—she took the middle path in her …

So, I was pointed to a post by Dean Ellis saying that MySQL needs a mothership which was written in response to another post by Baron Schwartz saying a mothership might not be the best thing for MySQL. Selena Decklemann recently posted about the issue of not having a company behind the software in the Postgres world.

Baron’s first post was spurned by someone saying:
you know, you guys really need Sun/MySQL, because without the mother ship, things will fall apart and your own business will fail.

Dean thinks this may be have been a conversation he had, and states:
What I actually said …

The bad news is that whatever agreement MySQL AB had with Meetup.com has ended. As per the wiki at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/How_to_create_a_user_group:

MySQL AB has an agreement in place with meetup.com to cover the organizer fees. Simply click at the link at the top of the meetup.com page to request your electronic voucher so you can become an organizer.

Unfortunately, this agreement has ended, so there’s going to have to be a more manual process to get MySQL to sponsor the meetup groups. At its cheapest, a year of meetup.com is $144.

The good news is that Giuseppe and Dups (as well as the local Sun/MySQL folks in Boston who also sponsor the pizza and soda we have) have expressed that they are dedicated to sponsoring these user groups, so nobody has to go around digging for spare change just yet.

Here’s the sad e-mail I …

This edition of Log Buffer is my first article on the Pythian Blog. It seems appropriate that, as I start a new chapter of my life in Canada and am looking to the future, a lot of the blogs this week are doing the same.

After the shock of the Oracle takeover the MySQL community is full of hope. Mark Callaghan has written about the new storage engines for MySQL and also suggestions for what the MySQL community could be doing while they wait to hear what Oracle has planned.

Kaj Arno has looked to the future and he thinks he has found some answers.

With the …

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., …