I love Wordpress.  Really there isn’t a better blogging platform on this platform.  It’s that good.  And I’ve been using it to self-host my blog for the past year or so.  For awhile, I hosted it using II6 on WHS v1.  That was a real pain as it took several days to find a URL rewriting solution that worked with IIS6.  The past few months I’ve been hosting it on my Windows 7-based media center.  Since that runs IIS7, URL rewriting was easier using the standard URL rewrite module.

A few days ago I decided to test out WHS “Vail”.  After installing it, I wanted to move my blog onto it so I downloaded the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.  It promptly let me know that it couldn’t find any products in my selected language.  Huh?  This is what drives people crazy about Windows software.  Crap just doesn’t make sense sometimes.

I googled and found several links …

Sorry for this not getting out sooner.  Connector/Net 6.3.2 was released several days ago but somehow the release announcement was never made. MySQL Connector/Net 6.3.2, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a beta release and is intended to introduce you to the new features and enhancements we are planning. This release should not be used in a production environment.  It is now available in source and binary form from [http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.3.html] and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time - if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The new features or changes in this release are:

• Visual Studio 2010 RTM support
• New sql editor.  Create a new file with a .mysql extension to see it in action

…

MySQL Connector/Net 6.1.4, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is our latest GA release and is suitable for use in all scenarios against servers ranging from version 4.1 to 5.5!

It is now available in source and binary form from [http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.1.html] and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time – if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

This is a maintenance release and includes many bug fixes.  Please review the change log for details.

Thank you for using our product!

MySQL Connector/Net 6.0.6, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a maintenance release and is approved for use in all situations.

It is now available in source and binary form from [http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.0.html] and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time - if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.)

There are lots of bug fixes in this release so please review the changelog.

Thank you!

Oracle managed to score a major victory last week at the MySQL Conference by announcing performance gains of 200-360% in the forthcoming version 5.5.  This is a tremendous improvement and comes in part due to closer collaboration between what were historically two distinct (and occasionally competitive) groups: the InnoBase team and the MySQL Server team.  Bringing the InnoBase team under the direction of the MySQL Server team under Tomas Ullin is a great benefit not only to MySQL developers, but also for MySQL users.  No doubt these performance gains are a result of many months of hard work by not only Tomas, but also a good number of folks on both teams including guys like Mikael Ronstrum, Kojstja, Calvin Sun and others.  

Reaction to the new release has been positive in the community from the likes of …

I work for a start-up and like the folks at virtually every start-up we dream of being covered by one of the Big 8  business publications: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Economist, the Financial Times, and USA Today.

The folks at ITDatabase took a closer look at how they cover the tech industry and surveyed a group of veterans from major tech PR agencies to see what their experiences were like. The …

MySQL Connector/Net 6.3.1, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver
for MySQL has been released. This is an alpha release and is intended to
introduce you to the new features and enhancements we are planning. This
release should not be used in a production environment.

It is now available in source and binary form from
[http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.3.html] and mirror sites
(note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time
- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later
or choose another download site.)

The new features or changes in this release are:

• Visual Studio 2010 RC support
• Nested transaction scope support

What we know may be broken
—————————-

…

A special extended edition of Tech Messages for 2010-02-20 through 2010-02-24:

• Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey of Nearly 1,600 CIOs Shows IT Budgets in 2010 to be at 2005 Levels
  Virtualization tops the technology priorities.
• Cisco Offers Three-Year, Zero-Percent Financing to U.S. Small and Medium-Sized Businesses -> Cisco News
• Marc Alff's blog: Performance schema overview
  Really interesting stuff for MySQL developers.
• …

MySQL Connector/Net 6.3.0, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver
for MySQL has been released. This is an alpha release and is intended to
introduce you to the new features and enhancements we are planning. This
release should not be used in a production environment.

It is now available in source and binary form from
[http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.3.html] and mirror sites
(note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point of time
- if you can’t find this version on some mirror, please try again later
or choose another download site.)

New features or changes:

• Visual Studio 2010 RC support
• Nested transaction scope support

What we know may be broken

• Documentation is not …

This Thursday (1/21) we will be hosting a webinar where we go over the new features in Connector/Net 6.2.  You can get more information and register for the webinar here.