A number of folks have asked me to create a post of a PostgreSQL installation on Windows. So, here is my step-by-step PostgreSQL 9.3 installation.

Download PostgreSQL Database

You can start the download of PostgreSQL from this site. It leads you to the EnterpriseDB site, where you can download the prepackaged software.

Install PostgreSQL 9.3 on Windows

These steps walk you through installing PostgreSQL and the the pgJDBC v9.3, psqlODBC (32 bit), and psqlODBC (64 bit) packages.

1. The first thing you need to do is launch the …

In teaching, I had a problem because my students have different base operating systems, like Windows 7, Windows 8, Linux, and Mac OS X. I needed a teaching and lecture platform that would let me teach it all (not to mention support their environments). That meant it had to virtualize any of the following with a portable device:

• Windows 7 or 8 hosting natively an Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
• Windows 7 or 8 hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
• Mac OS X hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or 12c and MySQL Database 5.6
• Ubuntu hosting a Fedora or Oracle Unbreakable Linux VM (3 or 4 GB) with Oracle Database 11g XE, 11g, or …

This is either too funny or too sad.

An acquaintance sent me this image from a cyber cafe or hotel in Russia. It says that my blog site is prohibited and violates Russian law, and that they’re blocking my site in accordance with the Russian Federal Law of 27.07.2006 No. 149-FZ.

All I can say is, “Wow!” I didn’t know that stuff about writing programs, web pages, and solving generic database and operating system problems was so sensitive. For that matter, I didn’t know what I post would interest any government. I half wonder whether my friend’s pulling my leg.

As I reflect on it, could it be that Oracle post on how to write an encrypted object type? or, how with proper OS credentials …

I actively maintain virtual test instances for my writing and teaching on Windows 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, and Solaris. Perl on Windows is always interesting. I use ActivePerl on Windows 7 rather than Strawberry Perl, and it was interesting to see this note after I upgraded to the most current Community Edition of ActivePerl (5.16.3).

I thought it might be kind to post ActiveState’s Release Note because you should really read it before you try to install ActivePerl on Windows 7/8. Just make sure you’ve removed any earlier version of ActivePerl before trying the install. That’s what I did, and surprise, there weren’t any problems.

While the installation doesn’t tell you that you need to restart the Windows 7 operating system, you do. If you don’t restart Windows 7 after the ActivePerl install, you’ll get the following error message:

      install_driver(mysql) failed: …

I’m posting this because of a question raised against this older post on how to configure the %CLASSPATH% to find the ojdbc6.jar file. This is the lab file I use in my Database 1 class to expose students to the moving parts of writing Java programs against the Oracle database. That’s why I choose to use a CLOB data type, which requires Oracle’s DBMS_LOB package and wrapping stored procedures.

If you want the same content for MySQL, here’s the link. The full program in either blog entry is available by clicking on the fold/unfold Java Source Code Program widget at the bottom of the respective posts.

This demonstrates how to create an Java infrastructure for reading …

A couple students in one of my classes ran into a problem when competing Java threads tried to insert new rows in a table. They raised an error when they tried the DELAY keyword to avoid the race (collision) condition in an INSERT statement. It was simple to explain to them that the DELAY keyword doesn’t work with an InnoDB table. Any attempt throws the following error:

      ERROR 1616 (HY000): DELAYED OPTION NOT supported FOR TABLE 'message'

Important Update: INSERT DELAYED is gone in MySQL 5.6.6 (announcement) and the whole issue comes down to synchronizing threads (some dislike the solution) or using the ON DUPLICATE KEY …

After updating the AVGFree virus definitions, I was surprised to find that Zend CE (Community Edition) 4.0.6 had a worm in the JavaServer.exe file. There was greater surprise when Zend CE 5.3.9 (5.6.0-SP1) also had the same worm.

This is the message identifying the worm (click on it to see a full size image), and you can read about this particular worm on the Mcafee site:

Unless you have the full version of AVG or another security program to try and fix the file, you can only quarantine the file. Quarantine or removal disables Zend CE from working. It begs the questions, “how does Zend release a core file with a worm?”

I’ll update this when there’s a fix to this problem.

Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta 1 - the next major version of Vista, download here. There are tons of improvments mostly centered around making the content easily & intuitively accessible. But hey, Mac OSX already serves that purpose well for quite some time ;-)

But I still want to make sure that our Rails stack (NetBeans, GlassFish, and MySQL) work fine on it. And it very well do, without any issues, as you'll realize at the end of this blog :)

Lets first get started with installing Windows 7 Beta as a Virtual Box image. Few points to note here:

• Only IE can be used for downloading …