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This Beta release, as any other pre-production release, should not be...

Uhh, just look a little deeper.

Are you demanding that a Slashdotter actually reads and understand an article before he posts? That he is informed? WTF?

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/ansi-diff-transa ctions.html

Note: This Beta release, as any other pre-production release, [...]

The changes in this release are as follows:

This version now includes support for stored procedures, triggers,
views, and many other features. This is the first Beta release in the
5.0 series. All attention will now be focused on fixing bugs and
stabilizing 5.0 for later production release.

Yes.... http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/replication.html

Yes... http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/

Yes.... http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/replication.html

Yes... http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/

Yes. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/ansi-diff-foreig n-keys.html has all you ever want to know about foreign keys and mysql

It *is* a beta release:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/news-5-0-3.html

D.1.2. Changes in release 5.0.3 (23 Mar 2005)

Note: This Beta release, as any other pre-production release, should not be installed blah blah blah

This Beta release, as any other pre-production release, should not be...

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/replication.html

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql-cluster-ov erview.html

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/replication.html

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql-cluster-ov erview.html

It's astonishing how far mysql has come. I'd been using 3.23 since before the dawn of time. Like most users of my ilk, I'd hacked alot of "databasish" functions together at the application level. My dilemma now is throwing away all that work to migrate to something I know is better. But there's no doubt that replication, triggers etc are all worth it.

The *best* thing that I got out of the class though, was to talk freely with the MySQL guys about their reality of trying to make a living with a "mostly" free product. They convinced me to buy a membership in MySQL Network which is essentially support that I probably won't use. This upgrade they are turning out though is good enough to make me WANT to pay (once).

It's astonishing how far mysql has come. I'd been using 3.23 since before the dawn of time. Like most users of my ilk, I'd hacked alot of "databasish" functions together at the application level. My dilemma now is throwing away all that work to migrate to something I know is better. But there's no doubt that replication, triggers etc are all worth it.

The *best* thing that I got out of the class though, was to talk freely with the MySQL guys about their reality of trying to make a living with a "mostly" free product. They convinced me to buy a membership in MySQL Network which is essentially support that I probably won't use. This upgrade they are turning out though is good enough to make me WANT to pay (once).

Beta?

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/news-5-0-x.html

As you can see, MySQL 5.0.3 is still in alpha status. It hasn't reached Beta yet.

I'm not sure where the whole "beta" thing came from. Maybe 5.0.4 will be beta, but I don't believe 5.0.3 is.

> I read somewhere that MySQL was thinking of having
> updateable views in a future version of MySQL. Is
> this in MySQL 5? Have they even been able to do it?

Yes, updateable views were implemented in MySQL 5.0.1 (July '04).

Uh, I'm going to interpret that as "does MySQL have JDBC compliant drivers?" The answer is "sure, has been for years." Be sure to download the right version for you.

I agree with you, but this is a difficult matter since it conflicts with basic human emotions - greed and lazyness. A software company for instance, can put a lot of manhours on producing a product. They then want to earn back what they've put into it (you have to feed even the programmers sometimes, you know). The easiest way to do that is sell it on a CD. You just cram out a shitload of cds and put those in stores and if the product is any good, people will buy. Easy money.

Now you say that anyone should be able to distribute copies for free. That means that I can buy a CD, then make a shitload of copies and put them in piles outside the store. Nobody would then buy the product from the stores, since it's available for free right outside. The company wouldn't make any money out of it and all the programmers would starve to death. Another one bites the dust.

The solution is ofcourse to implement a different buissness model. For instance as http://www.mysql.com/ is doing - give away your product for free and charge for professional support. This is far from easy and requires good managing skills, something that many company-leaders lack.

What about music? A successfull artist could live of giving concerts to the fans, that download and share the music. Movies? The movie-hiring buissness would dissapear, so the only thing left would be movie-theaters. Wouldn't people stop going to theaters if you could download the movie? Not if you have reasonable prices and give a good experience. What experience? Well I don't know, it doesn't exist yet, cause nobody cared to come up with one since what we have now is "good enough". Myself, I'd even be happy with the current one, if only they'd lower the prices. As it is, I almost never go to movies.

With the old model, you can make lot of money fast. With the new one you have to struggle to make your living. The result? Big lazy companies lobbying for laws that will make it possible for them to continue to make loads of money fast and easy.

But I have a feeling that it will not last. If everybody on this planet were lazy stupid bums, the big companies would win and we would get lousy products for a high price and people would still eat it, since nobody cared. But obvously there are many that care and do something about it and I think that is enough to make sure that we are on the right track to the "Free Information" future =) // no I don't have a sig

I wonder if the book covers the fact that if you use MySQL for commercial use and you don't release the source code you have to pay for it. Otherwise you are violating their licencing agreement Licence Agreement
I would like to see some novice user post their shopping cart code on their site so that the hacker won't even have to break a sweat trying to get into the credit card system. What the novice really needs is a PHP Postgresql book, but I don't know of one. That's because Postgresql uses the BSD licence and doesn't care what you do with it About Postgresql

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

...if you're frontend is as messed up as your site.

Just tried looking at a product detail and then adding to cart from there in Firefox 1.0.1 and it doesn't work.

Ah! I see now, your database keeps card details secret by never storing them at all, genius!

Seriously, MySQL is a lot of things but insecure on a well firewalled box it isn't. My companies e-commerce package uses postgresql by default but can fall back on MySQL (with a few cludges to get around limitations) if that's all that is available.

As for mission critical, Yahoo Finance, Associated Press, Lycos, Los Alamos Laboratory, NASA and Suzuki (to name but a few) would disagree with you there.

MySQL doesn't even have views!

InnoDB is used in production at numerous large database sites requiring high performance.
The famous Internet news site Slashdot.org runs on InnoDB.
(from the InnoDB Overview)

Not to mention that MySQL doesn't even enforce referential integrity would would seem much less functional than MS SQL.

Will people ever stop saying this? InnoDB tables, which provide referential integrity, have been available for MySQL since version 3.23.34a (2001), are included in binary distributions by default as of MySQL 4.0, and are the default table type on Windows starting with version 4.1.5. See InnoDB Overview.

JP

I have often looked to MySQL's html documentation as a shining example of what documentation should be like. It has a pretty good API, too. I usually haven't the time to do a really knock-up job of my own documentation, but I do try to look at MySQL's for my general approach, including the format (html). Here's an example of some of my documentation. I borrowed some pointers from the standard UNIX man page format, too, because it's been in use for a long time and developed into something reasonably complete and useful.

Another good example (imo) is the RFC which defines the NNTP protocol, rfc-977.

Know your audience -- the HOWTO I wrote was primarily for nonprogrammers with rudimentary knowledge of UNIX command line use (waybackup's primary expected users), but also for programmers who might be trying to debug or extend my code.

The most important thing with a SDK or any other tool, in my opinion, is use it a lot before publishing it, or even considering its development complete. Don't just come up with artificial examples, but actually use it internally to solve real-world problems. Your developers will unavoidingly find really annoying little problems in need of fixing, and come up with time-saving functions (perhaps just wrappers around already-existing API functions) which might need to be added to the SDK. Perhaps there's a function which seemed reasonable at the time, but in actual practice leads to runaway memory consumption. Maybe there are several functions which often get used together, but require the programmer to keep track of parameters which could get hidden internally instead. A nice long beta test, with the expectation of many programmer hours spent in reaction to user-reported errors/suggestions, is also often a good thing.

In fact, as a programmer I usually tailor my development effort towards getting something minimally useful first, and then actually use it, and let my use define further development. Features that sound good "on paper" are often a waste of time to develop because they don't actually get used. Also, thinking real hard at code does not necessarily make it better than code which has been shaped by real-world usage.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. Good luck with your SDK!

-- TTK

MySQL supports transactions http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/transactional-co mmands.html

Just been poring over the new RPM versions...

I see FC4 includes MySQL 4.1.10 a nice wee jump up from 3.23. Apparently RedHat are now happy with the MySQL licensing terms.

It has Eclipse 3.1, dovecot, bash 3 (with debugger), Tomcat 5 (but only 5.0, not the declared stable 5.5.7), Xen 2. And that is about all that caught my eye.

Having just been recompiling the RHEL4 sources I'm struck by how similar the versions all are. I'm presuming that rhel4 split off fc4 or vice versa a month or two back. I'd be curious how/if they co-ordinate all the patches and source code between the two different brands.

--
FC3 (now!) and RHEL4-based (soon!) VPSs

...Right.

Nobody actually financially benefits from open source.

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't quite catch what you meant. Run that by me again?

The MySQL web site has a press release that briefly explains the dual-license business model.

You're doing something on a non-professional level, and expect professional level results on the cheap? I don't think its going to happen.

Nah, that could never happen.

Have I been missing something all this time?

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/binary-log.html

Correct me if I'm wrong, but MySQL does have a transaction log. It's called Binary Log and you can read about it in the documentation.

Per-cpu licensing has been around a long time, and has been a retarded idea a long time. Hopefully, this will spell the death-knell for per-cpu licensing.

Licensing should be per-computer. Or possibly per-user in some cases. The number of cpus/cores in your computer shouldn't drive up the cost of the license.

Oracle, MS, et. al were able to get away with per-cpu licensing as long as the only really multi-cpu machines were corporate 'big-iron' that had 8 processors. But now that cpu makers are trying to shove multiple cores into the cpu, and multi-cpu systems are gradually becoming more mainstream, it's not gonna wash. Home users will never agree to pay microsoft $1200 for licensing an 8-cpu copy of windows for their 8-core computer.

Granted, the immediate thing in question, Oracle, isn't a home-user situation, but even companies are going to get fed up with it. If Oracle gets too greedy, companies may just choose from among a few other alternatives. And if they are really smart, and as long as it can do what they need, they might choose a free software database, like PostgreSQL or the ever-popular-on-slashdot MySQL.

I don't know about PostgreSQL, but with MySQL you can. I guess you'll still need to buy a license (see http://www.mysql.com/products/cluster/), but it's definitely much cheaper than Oracle and some users say it's much better too.

Argggg... It has subqueries (MySQL 4.1). It has transactions (INNOdb tables). It has a binary log. etc, etc, etc. Please check this kind of bull against the crash-me section of MySQL's site.
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/features.html

Not sure what to say about the truncation because MySQL does perform in the manner you describe. What confuses me is why you're even allowing bad data to reach the database... How about you just let your users know they entered more data than you had designed the schema to handle?

For that price you still don't get support. We pay for licenses because we ship MySQL as part of a commercial software package.

Read this: http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/

Probably from MySQL's license page, which seems to be confused about how you can or can't distribute their database. Specifically:

Under the Open Source License, you must release the complete source code for the application that is built on MySQL.

...

Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute. As long as you never distribute the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not.

Obviously if your application only uses their database there's no reason it would need to be GPLed, since you're distributing two separate pieces of software.

However, there appears to be some sort of confusion when it comes to using the drivers, which are also under the GPL. I expect that no matter what MySQL says, if you're using JDBC or ODBC drivers than you don't need to GPL your application, since the linking doesn't occur until runtime and you never actually call any MySQL methods, just ODBC/JDBC methods. (Same for Perl's DBI, probably.) PHP's MySQL drivers are more questionable, because they're explicitly only for MySQL.

Basically, MySQL seems to want people to believe that you need to GPL your code if you so much as use their database. Otherwise, you'd need a license. That's BS - you aren't allowed to add restrictions to a GPLed product. And the GPL is pretty clear that your use of a product does not make you fall under the GPL.

Using the MySQL DB drivers in non-Open Source code, on the other hand... That's much more murky. Personally I believe that it's a non-issue in cases where your code uses a public interface like ODBC, JDBC, or Perl's DBI to access MySQL.

Perhaps if they had a little bit of that old magic SQL compliance

I have used both MySql and Postgres on my Linux server. From a beginner's perspective, syntax is my main reason to use MySql over Postgres. For example compare Postgres's sequences:

create sequence seq_id_Folder increment 1
minvalue 1
cycle;

create table Folder (
FolderId int primary key default nextval('seq_id_Folder'::text),
...
);

To MySql's auto_increment:

CREATE TABLE `folder` (
`FolderId` int NOT NULL auto_increment,
...
);

does http://dev.mysql.com/common/img/mysql.png look like a seagull to you? its a goddamn dolphin. oddly enough, your humorous comment is still somewhat applicable.

Why are there two administrator accounts, admin and root? I'm trying to find something in the docs (I was at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/default-privileg es.html already). Can someone point out the right place in the docs, or explain it in his own words?

"99.99% of people who run MySQL run it on the same machine as their webserver that queries it."

This random "plucking of statistics from ass" is starting to get irritating. There are "Over 5 million active MySQL installations worldwide" [Link. By your reasoning there would only be 500 or so installations of MySQL on separate machines. Right. So less than 100 customers then? (even small sites like wikipedia have 5 MySQL machines)

99.999% of people who quote statistics with nines in are making them up, and of those, 99% can't count

I wonder if that is why Yahoo Finance is not working correctly at the moment. It is suppose to be powered by MYSQL

Yahoo Error

I wonder how this is different from MySQL Cluster an in memory only DB. From my own comparisons of regular MySQL versus MySQL Cluster, I didn't see much of a performance increase. But, I guess it wasn't "streaming" either. I didn't really see too many technical specs for their new DB, but I didn't really look either. I wonder how they handle saving stuff to disk? Or do they not even bother and hope that the generator holds out until the power is restored?

What about MySQL Control Center?
http://www.mysql.com/products/mysqlcc/

Works fine for me.

Licences are strane things boyo. I once heared of a licence that extended to all derived works. So if I licenced product A under this licence, and created derived product B from it, and put code I had written for product B into product C, the C would have to be licenced the same as product A.

I bet you've heared of this licence yourself. It's called the GPL.

No. You own the copyright to whatever code you wrote, and can do what you please with it. However, you cannot take code belonging to someone else, licensed under the GPL, and relicense it under some other license.

In your example, if product C contains code from product A, and you don't own the copyright to this code, then product C must comply with the license product A was licensed under. The reason for this is that you must have a right to distribute all parts of product C in order to have a right to distribute it - if you don't, then you are distributing someone else's code without their permission, and are thus in violation of copyright laws.

On the other hand, if product C was completely written by you, or you have somehow else obtained rights to distribute every component of it under whatever license product C is distributed under, then of course you can distribute product C. And of course you have a right to distribute your own code under whatever license you wish, or under several licenses - for example, MySQL is distributed under the GPL, but can also be licensed (for money) under other license(s) that allow you to bundle it with prorietary products. This practice is known as dual licensing.

Think of it this way: if you write a cool compression library, and license it under the GPL so it can be used in some GPL'd program, then of course you can use it yourself in your own proprietary programs - after all, you hold the copyright, the right to copy. And of course you can give out whatever licenses you wish to whoever you wish - why couldn't you ?

So MySQL Database Server retails at 500 euros (that's the package we usually use for mythtv or whatever non-profit use we can think of.

Not to mention, MySQL is not Open Source.

From http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/opens ource-license.html

Our software is 100% GPL (General Public License); if yours is 100% GPL compliant, then you have no obligation to pay us for the licenses.

As for the link you provided, it seems to be a complaint about the habit of people to do business with proven, rather than unknown, vendors. It does mention MySQL, and says that it's license pages (not actual licenses, but pages talking about licensing) "suggest" that you should get a commercial license for in-house software involving MySQL. It also implies that the GPL is vulnerable to "radical interpretation", whatever that means, and hints of ominous things that might happen if open source companies are acquired by HP, IBM or Oracle - not to mention the secret desire of RedHat: "To gently push me into a network of interlocking software and hardware components all under the same brand name" - does RedHat even make hardware ?

In short, genral FUD piece.

Or, even if it is technically open source, if you use it in any commercial application you have to pay.

It is open source, on the grounds that the source code is available. It is free open source, on the grounds that the source code is available under an open source license (GPL). As usual, you cannot join GPL'd and proprietary code, unless you manage to get a license that allows this from the copyright holder of the GPL'd code.

Please explain this technicality you speak of.

You're even supposed to pay for each copy of MySQL used by developers of commercial applications on their development machines.

If you redistribute MySQL in-house in a way that violates the GPL, you will need to get a commercial license, since you cannot use the GPL since you just violated it. How is this different from any other product ?

That's not the kind of Open Source software I'm interested in.

Fine, don't use it then. But please don't spread FUD about it.