There have been many articles about the downtime issue with Cloudflare last week, so I won’t get into the technical details of that. However, there’s the fine print to remember. Consider this a subtle reminder that core Internet infrastructure services like Cloudflare’s DNS-based “Always Online” caching and packet inspection security services do not come with Service Level Agreements even at the “Pro” account level. Even with a Pro account you are paying for a service with no uptime guarantee and you must only hope that it resolves your sites the majority of the time. This is fine, this is what the contract says: no SLA unless you pay for the Business account. An odd naming convention given that most Professionals are using their websites for business and would want the SLA, but I digress.

So, the SLA is not really the issue if you look at the architectural alternatives to building an architecture that desires availability when …

I’m pleased to announce that my first book, the InnoDB Quick Reference Guide, is now available from Packt Publishing and you can download it by clicking here. It covers the most common topics of InnoDB usage in the enterprise, including: general overview of its use and benefits, detailed explanation of seventeen static variables and seven dynamic variables, load testing methodology, maintenance and monitoring, as well as troubleshooting and useful analytics for the engine. The current version of MySQL ships with InnoDB as the default table engine, so whether you program your MySQL enabled applications with PHP, Python, Perl or otherwise, you’ll likely benefit from this concise but comprehensive reference guide for InnoDB databases.

Here are the chapter overviews …

Packt Publishing recently sent me a copy of MySQL for Python to review and after reading through the book I must say that I’m rather impressed at the variety of topics that the book covers.

It starts off with the basics of setting up MySQL for your testing/development needs by going over several of the common installation and configuration methods. After that it’s a quick intro for connection methods and simple error reporting for connections. The author gives a quick intro to CRUD and how it relates to databases and python before heading into the common tasks of simple queries. I was surprised to see some database profiling discussion; which is rather handy for a new coder or a person new to MySQL. Once the basics of …

I’ve recently had the pleasure of reading “Python Testing: An easy and convenient approach to testing your python projects” from Packt Publishing. It’s been a quick read but a solid set of instructions on the different methods for the subject.

The book starts out very quickly with details about the various methods that are available, the means of automation for testing, and of course the environment you’d want to be in for working on the subjects that the book covers. It then, in the second chapter, moves into the guts of testing by describing the basics of doctest via syntax and some simple examples, and then moves on to a real world example via the AVL tree. It’s all very basic testing until chapter three where the author gets into unit testing, …

I’ve recently been migrating my wiki/documentation for Kontrollbase to Trac. For those that are not aware, Trac is a web-based documentation/wiki/Subversion tool that is used by countless number of software projects. Subversion, of course, is a software collaboration and code management repository that manages branches/tags/trunk files with revision control. It’s one of the most heavily used open-source code repositories available. Given that I use SVN (subversion) for all of my software applications and am now using Trac, the book “Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion” by David J Murphy comes as a useful and great resource for integrating these two useful tools. …

I’m pleased with the results of Kontrollbase so far. We’ve had 87 downloads in the last month without any official promotion other than this blog and syndication to planet.mysql.com - so thank you to all of those users that are trying out the application. I’d love to hear your thoughts.. Any feedback about the installation process, the client setup, documentation, and general usefulness would be great. So if you have used it please take a quick minute to leave a comment or send me an email. Thanks everyone, and remember you can always post improvements or bugs at the following link: http://code.google.com/p/kontrollbase/issues/entry

Legacy of Blood is the fourth offering by Cinematic Titanic. For those not in the know, Cinematic Titanic is the new project by five cast members from Mystery Science 3000: Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, J. Elvis Weinstein and Mary Jo Pehl.

Cinematic Titanic follows the same concept as the original series, with the performers appearing in …

Good news fellow DBAs; adding to the already packed list of RSS/Atom aggregation sites out there on the internet, there is a new site catering to DBAs called Relationalnews. Feel free to add your feed(s) for aggregation, because what else do bloggers want but more visibility to search engines, right? This was basically a coding project to get familiar with CodeIgnitor as well as RSS and Atom xml feed processing in PHP. Pretty simple looking back on it, and it was generally a fun project.I’ll probably add more features to the site at a later time, with free time being what it is…So read the news! http://relationalnews.com 

I recently purchased a new Dell 1525 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04. I've been in need of a new laptop for about a year, and decided to take the plunge and see how good a Linux based laptop from Dell really is. My needs are fairly modest. I'm not a gamer, and don't watch many videos. Mainly it's used for blogging, internet, OpenOffice, IRC/IM, listening to podcasts and programming. Portablity is only somewhat important, mostly it'll be used 80% on a desk with the remaining time mobile.

Model: Dell Inspiron 1525N
Price as reviewed: $749
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 Ghz/800 Mhz FSB/2MB Cache)
OS: Ubuntu 8.04 with DVD playback
Screen: Glossy 15.4" widescreen (1280x800)
…

I recently purchased a new Dell 1525 laptop running Ubuntu 8.04. I've been in need of a new laptop for about a year, and decided to take the plunge and see how good a Linux based laptop from Dell really is. My needs are fairly modest. I'm not a gamer, and don't watch many videos. Mainly it's used for blogging, internet, OpenOffice, IRC/IM, listening to podcasts and programming. Portablity is only somewhat important, mostly it'll be used 80% on a desk with the remaining time mobile.

Model: Dell Inspiron 1525N
Price as reviewed: $749
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 (2 Ghz/800 Mhz FSB/2MB Cache)
OS: Ubuntu 8.04 with DVD playback
Screen: Glossy 15.4" widescreen (1280x800)
…