I am passing this along — I am not sure if most folks reading this can make it, as it is last-minute and in the Boston area, but I figured I’d let people know that the New England Database Society exists. It’s free, sponsored by Sun (and has been for years, long before Sun bought MySQL), and is hosted by my college database professor, Mitch Cherniack. (To that end, I should probably make sure to promote the Boston User Group here more often! I keep forgetting…)

You can find information on how to be a part of the mailing list at http://www.cs.brown.edu/sites/neds/

The next New England Database Society will be held on Friday, March 27 and the speaker is Christian Jensen of Aalborg University.

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[N]ew [E]ngland [D]atabase …

As folks are making their plans to go to the MySQL User Conference, I just wanted to remind folks of the schedule of MySQL Camp.

One feature I put together for MySQL Camp but anyone can use is a restaurant list for the hotel area. There’s very little within walking distance, but many people will be local or will rent a car, so finding someone to drive with should not be a problem. The restaurant list is on the MySQL Forge Wiki at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/SantaClaraRestaurants — updates are welcome!

About MySQL Camp: MySQL Camp is completely free, just walk on in and enjoy the sessions. All sessions are in the Bayshore room off the Mezzanine, and there will be signs directing you to the MySQL Camp room. I describe it as being like “an additional room for the MySQL Conference, but it’s …

This is the 140th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome.

Let us begin with Oracle this week. Dan Norris illustrates how to start database services automatically after instance startup. He says, “Services are an essential component for managing workload in a RAC environment. If you’re not defining any non-default services in your RAC database, you’re making a mistake.”

Vivek Sharma published his tale of, Latch: Row Cache Objects causing huge performance issue. Clever detective …

In about 15 minutes, Giuseppe Maxia will begin a webinar in which the main focus is a presentation on “How to have a good presentation”. Talk about meta!

Giuseppe posted how to join the free webinar.

The slides can be found at http://datacharmer.org/downloads/2009_03_Presentation.pdf.

Welcome to the 139th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Let us begin with a look at the best from the Oracle ’sphere.

Oracle

Many of you might be considering some more training or certification. Coskan Gundogar has already been there, and has returned with the tale to tell, What I learned during Oracle SQL Expert Exam Study Part-1.

In Jared Still’s Ramblings a discussion of the evils of encoding meaning into data.

…

Welcome to the 138th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. If you aren’t aware of who I am, my name is Nick and I am a Senior DBA at The Pythian Group. This is my second run at hosting Log Buffer, and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

As we see winter giving way to summer, I thought I would start with Informix.
Over at Informix-technology Fernando talks about FUD for thought where he talks about the future of Informix vs. DB2.

Sticking with IBM, I thought that we …

This is the 137th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Dave Edwards is enjoying a week off, and so as part of my plot to take over the world, I am writing this week’s Log Buffer.

First, the fun stuff: Josh Berkus tells us that the American English Translation of the Manga Guide to Databases is available in Japanese Fairies and Third Normal Form.

Then, the basics:
Giri Mandalika points to an article on Using MySQL with Java Technology. This is a basic article on how to connect, and …

It has been over a year since the last OurSQL podcast. First, I want to thank everyone who has written in to tell me how much they loved the OurSQL podcast, and how they want it back. Plans are in the works for that, mostly I got busy writing a book on MySQL geared towards folks who are new to MySQL, but not necessarily new to databases. The book is coming out in May and can be pre-ordered at http://tinyurl.com/mysqlbook.

But enough about the past…..In this first Drizzle podcast, Jay Pipes and I talk about what Drizzle is and how Drizzle is different from MySQL both technically and from a community standpoint.

The podcast can be downloaded (5.76 Mb as an mp3 file) or played right through your browser at http://technocation.org/content/drizzle-podcast-%25231. The show notes are also on …

This is the 136th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome.

Let’s start with the bad news first. The relational database is doomed. Or is it? That is the line of inquiry taken by the item by Tony Bain on ReadWriteWeb. “Recently, a lot of new non-relational databases have cropped up both inside and outside the cloud. One key message this sends is, ‘if you want vast, on-demand scalability, you need a non-relational database’.  . . .  Is this a sign that relational databases have had their day and will decline over time?”

Whether or not you believe that your beloved relational DB’s days are numbered, you will be …

I have been talking more and more with colleagues about the Open Source community and licenses. Zak Greant recently wrote in Free Culture vs. Fear Culture vs. Fee Culture that, “People with bad intentions will do bad things . . . often regardless of the license on the work.”

And, unfortunately, he is right. If I release an article or presentation video with a Creative Commons license, it is still possible for my work to be plagiarized, and if it is, I will still feel violated.

Many of us who use Creative Commons or MySQL have an Open Source mentality. We often do not see value in pirating software—why would we use Microsoft Word (a legally licensed copy, or pirated) if we can use …