Slashdot Mirror

puppetman writes "MySQL announced a few hours ago that 4.1 has been deemed production ready with the release of 4.1.7. The major enhancements of 4.1 include sub-selects, faster communication between client and server (thanks to parameter binding), replication over SSL, and lots more. A full list can be found here. Time to rehash those tired arguments about why MySQL is not a real database, and (Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server/Access/SAPDB/Ingres/etc) is the only real database out there."

puppetman writes "MySQL announced a few hours ago that 4.1 has been deemed production ready with the release of 4.1.7. The major enhancements of 4.1 include sub-selects, faster communication between client and server (thanks to parameter binding), replication over SSL, and lots more. A full list can be found here. Time to rehash those tired arguments about why MySQL is not a real database, and (Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server/Access/SAPDB/Ingres/etc) is the only real database out there."

puppetman writes "MySQL announced a few hours ago that 4.1 has been deemed production ready with the release of 4.1.7. The major enhancements of 4.1 include sub-selects, faster communication between client and server (thanks to parameter binding), replication over SSL, and lots more. A full list can be found here. Time to rehash those tired arguments about why MySQL is not a real database, and (Postgres/Oracle/SQL Server/Access/SAPDB/Ingres/etc) is the only real database out there."

Halo1 writes "The NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign has officially launched today. It has industry support from 1&1, Red Hat and MySQL AB. The website is already available in 12 EU languages (more to be added soon), and contains a ton of information about the dangers of software patents, including the myths that surround them. Hopefully, more large companies will join this campaign in the future."

EqualSlash writes "The Windows installer for the upcoming MySQL 4.1 release will be built using Microsoft's first ever open source project - Windows Installer XML toolset(Wix). According to an InternetNews report, they are using Wix to convert the MSI file designed using InstallShield into XML to achieve greater control over the installer. Of course, they are simply using it because it's Open Source (CPL license) and in good faith. Earlier this year, when Microsoft surprised everybody by releasing the Wix project under an open source license, some were cautious about using it, as the specific XML schema it uses might be patented just like the Office xml schema. Whatever.. Rob Mensching, Wix's lead developer, is very happy about MySQL choosing to use Wix for their installer."

EqualSlash writes "The Windows installer for the upcoming MySQL 4.1 release will be built using Microsoft's first ever open source project - Windows Installer XML toolset(Wix). According to an InternetNews report, they are using Wix to convert the MSI file designed using InstallShield into XML to achieve greater control over the installer. Of course, they are simply using it because it's Open Source (CPL license) and in good faith. Earlier this year, when Microsoft surprised everybody by releasing the Wix project under an open source license, some were cautious about using it, as the specific XML schema it uses might be patented just like the Office xml schema. Whatever.. Rob Mensching, Wix's lead developer, is very happy about MySQL choosing to use Wix for their installer."

superid asks: "I'd like to get opinions and real world experiences that people have had with database centric applications that rely extensively on stored procedures. I believe that most enterprise class databases such as Oracle, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL, DB2 and others implement stored procedures. MySQL has been criticized for not supporting stored procedures and will be adding them in MySQL 5. The ANSI-92 SQL Standard also requires implementing some form of stored procedure (section 4.17). So, I'm asking Slashdot readers: if you were architecting a highly data-centric web based application today from a clean slate, how much (if at all) would/should stored procedures factor into your design? Where are they indispensable and where do they get in the way?" "The arguments for stored procedures are pretty straightforward: 1) Centralized code; 2) Compiled SQL is faster; 3) Enhanced security (as our application is over 15 years old, and consists of much legacy code, reimplementation and feature creep that now includes over 3000 stored procedures). At one time we had a client/server architecture so those three advantages were relevant. However, in the past 4 years we have moved everything to web front ends and I have argued that this is no longer true. Does it really matter if my business rules are centralized in stored procedures or in a set of php/asp scripts (ie, in the web tier)? Is it really important to shave compilation time when connection and execution times dominate? (and overall response is ok anyway?) Since the focal point is the webserver, shouldn't security be done there, rather than the DB?

In addition, you either have to have a dedicated T-SQL or PL/SQL coder who then is the weak link in your coding chain, or your pool of developers must become fluent in both your scripting language of choice as well as the SP language. I have experienced both of these approaches and found this to cause bottlenecks when 'the database guy' is unavailable and learning curve problems (bugs) with new coders getting familiar with the db language.

Finally, after staying with our DB engine choice for all these years we are acknowledging that they may not be around forever. Management has asked us to look into migrating our data and business logic to another DB choice. We'd sure love to just be able to point the web tier at a new data source but that is unattainable due to a convoluted tangle of db specific code."

Dr.Dubious DDQ asks: "With all the recent Microsoft(r) news, I see a lot of the usual complaining about Microsoft's unfair 'embrace and extend' practices. I do my own fair share of this, but I'd much rather actually *do* something about it.At the risk of prompting cries of 'No! That will only make them stronger!', I find myself asking: How possible is it to 'transparently' replace Microsoft-brand services with other (preferably, but not necessarily, Open Source) services (rather than flatly demanding migration away from all things MS)? Or put the other way around, what tweaks would have to be made to existing, standard services to make them 'bug-for-bug compatible' with MS versions, particularly OUTSIDE of the context of SMB/Samba, which is an already-obvious example?" While there are definite reasons why such an effort may be worthwhile, it is also possible that Microsoft could attempt to make legal attacks at such projects...even though they are designed with software interoperability in mind. Precedents in support of this idea do exist, such as: ReactOS and even standard Open Source openings like Gnumeric. "I've got two goals in mind here:

1. Ability to placate MS-platform applications that demand MS-brand services to connect to while ALSO allowing non-MS clients as close to 'full' functionality as possible with the same services
2. Naturally, ability to replace an MS-branded package would personally appeal to me as well for both technical and - yes, I'll admit it - philosophical reasons.

Ways of meeting either (or both) goal would be useful to me and, I suspect, a lot of other sysadmins.

For example:

• Is it possible (and feasible) to get OpenLDAP+Kerberos5 to fool Windows systems into believing they're talking to a "real" ActiveDirectory(r) server (without necessarily also having the entire Samba stack)?
• Can client programs that demand MS-SQL server generally use MySQL in MS SQL Compatibility mode instead, if MySQL is set to respond on the MS-SQL port (either directly or via ODBC?)
• How hard would it be to make a 'mod_dav_sharepoint type of module that spoofs Microsoft's special Sharepoint WebDAV behavior (which evidently also uses a 'special' non-standard SQL-like search mechanism - am I going to be kicked out of the club for thinking this looks, at least on the surface, like it might be a useful feature if usable by non-MS clients and implementable by non-MS servers)?
• Similarly, how feasible would it be to get non-MS DAV clients to be able to use Microsoft Sharepoint (or the hypothetical MS-alike drop-in replacement?)
• How good are the 'drop-in replacements' for MS Exchange?
• Are there issues with MS's implementation of IPP (are there any problems dropping Microsoft Printer Sharing entirely and using CUPS instead? It SEEMS that MS Windows 2000+ should support IPP directly, without resorting to Samba middleware - is this true?)
• Possibly risking heaps of derision for suggesting such an unlikely-sounding thing, but how about using mod_dav/Apache (as what Microsoft USED to refer to as 'Web Folders') as a replacement for SMB file sharing? Aside from possible performance issues, is this feasible, or are there too many incompatibilities in MS's DAV support for it to work?
• Are there any registry hacks or other tweaks that can be applied to Microsoft Windows-based systems to make them behave in more standards-compliant ways?
• ...etc?...

Are there other replacements people have investigated?"

orthogonal writes "The Justice Department today denied Freedom of Information Act requests to make public data on foreign lobbyists, claiming that '[i]mplementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating'. The requestor responded that '[t]his was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,' Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday. Maybe we should tell John Ashcroft about open source database and copying solutions?"

Chroniton writes "According to InternetNews.com: 'HP stepped up its commitment to open source software Monday by pledging to offer and support the MySQL database server and JBoss application server software in its servers' - it's also mentioned: 'The deal is truly symbiotic. While MySQL and JBoss get backing from a technology driver such as HP, HP gets the added credibility of being cozy with open source, a label many enterprises and HP rivals, such as IBM and Dell, are working toward.'"

An anonymous reader writes "PHP and SQL Security are being proven more weak every day. Uberhacker.Com is running a PHP and SQL security research project to raise awareness of secure scripting. The site hosts guides to secure PHP programming, forums, and scripting challenges to see who can create the most secure scripts."

jpkunst writes "Andy Oram, who attended the MySQL Users Conference which was held April 16-18 in Orlando, Florida, attempts to explain MySQL's popularity in his weblog at oreillynet.com. (More weblogs about the 2004 MySQL Users Conference can be found at the The 2004 MySQL User's Conference & Expo Blog Collection.)"

lawrencekhoo writes "MySQL AB announced yesterday that software for building a MySQL Cluster will be available for download by the end of April. Articles available from Computerworld, Internetnews, Linux Electrons, and PHP Architect. Great! Now my website can finally have 99.99% availability ..."

lawrencekhoo writes "MySQL AB announced yesterday that software for building a MySQL Cluster will be available for download by the end of April. Articles available from Computerworld, Internetnews, Linux Electrons, and PHP Architect. Great! Now my website can finally have 99.99% availability ..."

ryanjensen writes "According to an article on News.com, MySQL wrote an exception into its license to allow PHP to use its libraries. From the article: 'Because MySQL owns copyright to all the MySQL code, it can include additional license provisions to its software. The new provision, called the Free and Open Source Software License Exception, enables people to use MySQL client libraries with other open-source projects under other open-source licenses other than the GPL.'"

An anonymous reader writes "According to the MySQL User's Conference page, Chris Stone of Novell, the guy behind Open Source at Novell who was responsible for the purchase of SUSE and Ximian, will be speaking at the MySQL conference. Perhaps we finally get to see what Novell is planning to do with Linux?" (That conference is taking place in mid-April, in Orlando.)

OnBeyondBeing writes "'MySQL Administrator is a powerful new visual administration console that lets you easily administer your MySQL environment and gain better visibility into how your databases are operating. This is the first alpha release. The source code and binaries for Linux and Microsoft Windows XP/2000/NT are now available for download."

ChopsMIDI writes "Announced today at MySQL, is the new GUI for MySQL: The MySQL Administrator. This integrates database management and maintenance into a 'seamless' GUI. 'Easily perform all the command line operations visually including configuring servers, administering users, and dynamically monitoring database health. Other common administrative tasks such as monitoring replication status, backup and restore, and viewing logs can also be performed through the MySQL Administrator graphical console.' This sounds like a pretty sweet tool, but sadly, it's not available for downlodad yet, but it does have some nice screenshots."

ChopsMIDI writes "Announced today at MySQL, is the new GUI for MySQL: The MySQL Administrator. This integrates database management and maintenance into a 'seamless' GUI. 'Easily perform all the command line operations visually including configuring servers, administering users, and dynamically monitoring database health. Other common administrative tasks such as monitoring replication status, backup and restore, and viewing logs can also be performed through the MySQL Administrator graphical console.' This sounds like a pretty sweet tool, but sadly, it's not available for downlodad yet, but it does have some nice screenshots."

hendridm writes "The new 5.0-alpha release of MySQL includes the addition of stored procedures, as well as other advances designed to enhance the development of large-scale enterprise database applications. The MySQL 5.0 alpha development release is now available for testing and evaluation by the open source community. There's more info via CNET News, or you can download your copy today."

hendridm writes "The new 5.0-alpha release of MySQL includes the addition of stored procedures, as well as other advances designed to enhance the development of large-scale enterprise database applications. The MySQL 5.0 alpha development release is now available for testing and evaluation by the open source community. There's more info via CNET News, or you can download your copy today."

ulrikp writes "Swedish MySQL AB, makers of the MySQL database, have released an Alpha-version of their flagship, dubbed MySQL 5.0.0. The changes include basic support for SQL-99 stored procedures. Please note: Despite the version number, this is an Alpha release, and not for general consumption."

ulrikp writes "Swedish MySQL AB, makers of the MySQL database, have released an Alpha-version of their flagship, dubbed MySQL 5.0.0. The changes include basic support for SQL-99 stored procedures. Please note: Despite the version number, this is an Alpha release, and not for general consumption."

ulrikp writes "Swedish MySQL AB, makers of the MySQL database, have released an Alpha-version of their flagship, dubbed MySQL 5.0.0. The changes include basic support for SQL-99 stored procedures. Please note: Despite the version number, this is an Alpha release, and not for general consumption."

ulrikp writes "Swedish MySQL AB, makers of the MySQL database, have released an Alpha-version of their flagship, dubbed MySQL 5.0.0. The changes include basic support for SQL-99 stored procedures. Please note: Despite the version number, this is an Alpha release, and not for general consumption."

Slashback brings you updates tonight on Diebold's attempts to bring undisclosed-source, unauditable black-box voting to a ballot box near you, John Carmack's search for (rocket-fuel, not hair) peroxide, AT&T's (withdrawn) request for its customers' mail server addresses, open source goings on at Comdex, and more -- read on for the details.

Diebold Election Systems Round 2 in MD zznate writes "Looks like Diebold is not going to get off the hook so easily in Maryland after all. For anyone local, feel free to contact delegates Hixson or Hollinger to express your support. Perhaps they could even receive a copy or two (or fifty ;-) of the documents listed here."

Diebold is having an easier time at Swarthmore. yoshi_mon writes "Previously reported on /. was the Swarthmore Students Effort to keep the Diebold leaked memo's online. However that effort has been quashed by one Dean Bob Gross. To quote the dean, "We can?t get out in front in this fight against Diebold." BlackBoxVoting.com reports that '[Swarthmore College] is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files.'"

AT&T says Ha, just kidding! An anonymous reader writes "In an update to an earlier Slashdot article, Telco giant AT&T rushed to withdraw two notices sent to business partners and customers asking for the IP addresses of all outbound SMTP servers because of a 'human error' gaffe."

All this and cheap shrimp cocktail. blackbearnh writes "While the topic has been raised, I thought I'd mention a few other things going on at COMDEX Open-Source wise.

First off, the Open Source and Linux track has been expanded from a half-dozen sessions last year to nearly twenty this year. These will cover everything from the basics of Open Source (taught by folks like Ken Coar of Apache) to an intro to PHP led by Rasmus Lerdorf.

On the show floor, a massive 2500 sq foot Open Source Innovation Center will serve as the site for hourly talks by Open Source evangelists on business-related topics such as case studios proving the benefits of Open Source. There will also be a staffed "clinic" area where attendees can get advice on what Open Source technologies would work well in their business. There will also be install parties held at noon each day, where attendees can bring their laptops to get help installing MySQL or Debian. And lastly, a .ORG village inside the center will host representitives from more than a dozen prominent Open Source organizations, including OpenOffice and Mozilla.

Also, the COMDEX/ApacheCon exchange program continues this year. COMDEX members can get access to the ApacheCon expo floor and BOF sessions, while ApacheCon member can visit the COMDEX show floor and the Open Source keynotes. Shuttle service will link the two conventions.

James Turner
Co-Chair, Open Source, Fall 2003 COMDEX"

It's a crapshoot, eh. Dick Faze writes " Royal Bank of Canada is part of a $50 Million investment in SCO: Has our communist neighbor to the north finally flipped completely?" (We know Mr. Faze is being facetious, here ... don't we?) This is the same $50,000,000 investment deal in which some people suspected Microsoft's involvment.

Patent Office Cancels Swing Patent An anonymous reader writes "Remember the swing patent issued last year covering the method of swinging a swing? Well, the Patent Office must've taken offense at the amount of criticism it received over this patent. It initiated a reexam proceeding and after a year's worth of reexamination, they cancelled the patent on July 1, 2003."

But all the other patents are up to snuff, don't worry.

Carmack's Peroxide Troubles Over? Rob Jellinghaus writes "John Carmack's aerospace company has had problems getting enough concentrated 90% peroxide for their engines. So they have been working on mixed monoprop engines that would need only 50% peroxide, which would pretty much end their fuel troubles for good. They have had many failures, but they may have just succeeded. In his words: 'This is Very Good.'"

Remember, most of the world is still dial-up, at best. Anothermouse Cowered writes "It's a router, it's a firewall, it's a home gateway it's a... In another giant leap for the Open Source community, you can now hack on your own embedded Linux system for under $70. The source code for the ActionTEC Dual modem previously mentioned on Slashdot ('Hacking the Actiontec 56k Modem/Gateway') in September has now been released under the GPL. Downloads available here."

grugruto asks: "A lot of open source solutions are available to scale web sites with clusters but what about databases? I can't afford an Oracle RAC license but can I have something more reliable and fault tolerant than my single Postgres box? I have seen this recent article that looks promising for open source solutions. Do anyone have experiences with clusters of MySQL , Postgres-R, C-JDBC or other solutions? How does it compare to commercial products?"

Officially, the theme of this year's Open Source Software Convention (OSCON) 2003 is "Embracing and Extending Proprietary Software," and to that end approximately 1,500 attendees (and companies including Apple, Active State, online book-seller Powells.com and MySQL) are sharing space in three floors of Portland's downtown Marriott, and will until the conference's close on Friday. (Representatives from Microsoft are along for the ride, too. Lunch on Wednesday is Microsoft's treat.) An unoffical theme of ubiquitious connectivity and creative collaborative in much in evidence as well: besides the conference-furnished wireless access points throughout the classroom area, numerous other base stations (like the one I'm connected to right now) have popped up. What do you expect with more than a thousand laptop-toting programmers in one hotel? There's also a "semi-unofficial" wiki (applauded by Tim O'Reilly), an ongoing web log of the conference, and an irc channel filled with conference attendees. Read on for more.

The goods: Commercial vendor booths have been fork-lifted in and assembled throughout the course of the day in the lowest of three convention floors, but OSCON's company-sponsored exhibit booths are likely to be low-key and informative, not the glitzy schwag dispensaries of LinuxWorld Expo. (Added to which, the exhibits will only be up six hours on each of Wednesday and Thursday.)

Tutorials and other information-heavy sessions are the core of OSCON; attendees who have paid (or had their employers pay) more than a thousand dollars to attend a five days of tutorials and conference sessions are understandably serious about actually learning things.

I stopped in on one such serious session this morning, "A Day of Extreme Programming" taught by the Irish team of Marty Pauley, Tony Bowden, Marc Kerr and Karen Pauley. The instructors skipped over justifying the methodology of Extreme Programming, and instead immediately launched into a short, funny demonstration of multi-programmer iterative debugging before splitting the 30-or-so attendees into three programming teams for the rest of the day, each team coordinating its efforts using provided CVS servers to work for a simulated client (Karen Pauley, a manager in real life) with a nethack-style game to improve.

Marty Pauley drew some laughs by pointing out the "high-tech project coordination system" he had purchased in anticipation of the all-day session, which he said had cost about $14 in for the whole group. At this, he pulled out several packs of index cards, a plastic case to house them, and some rings to bind smaller collections of cards. "Forget about Gantt charts, every aspect of the project goes on an index card."

Cheap, not necessarily dirty. Pauley's Index-cards and CVS make a decent capsule of the whole conference: there's a definite leaning toward the practical, get-things-done-cheap aspect of open software rather than appeals to the importance of sharing emphasized by Richard Stallman's Free Software movement. OSCON features dozens of sessions and tutorials emphasizing the efficiency, standards compliance, and low-cost of source-available software, with just a few sessions touching on underlying philosophy or licensing. In one session yesterday, for instance, Free Software Foundation executive director Bradley Kuhn talked about the GNU General Public License as it applies to managers as well as to coders.

This doesn't mean that attendees aren't interested in philosophical underpinnings or changing the world -- more likely it's simply that in summer 2003, most programmers who would show up at an event like this have already wrestled with and come up with their own conclusions about software openness, including what licenses or license types they're comfortable using.

One indicator of the Open-vs-Free pragmatism at OSCON is the prevalence of Apple laptops running Mac OS X; Apple's OS may be the best poster child right now for the pleasing results possible in a mix of open source with proprietary software. One tutorial room I looked in on 22 attendees using Intel laptops, most of which were running graphical desktops on Linux or BSD, and 6 with PowerBooks running OS X. I note a similarly high proportion of OS X machines being used around the conference floor when hundreds of attendees swarm out of conference rooms at each break between sessions.

Changing the world, one press release at a time. A handful of interesting announcements have come out during the convention so far. Among them: MySQl and PogoLinux have announced a joint project, a turnkey database appliance running MySQL on an Intel based box. ActiveState (makers of well-regarded IDEs for Python and Perl, among other things) will show an alpha release of Komodo 2.5, the latest iteration of their IDE for programming in Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl and XSLT. Many more such announcements are likely after the exhibit hall opens tomorrow morning.

Not everything at OSCON is about helping businesses produce more virtual widgets per square inch, though -- the sense of collaboration isn't limited to downtown Portland. Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Tripod, and now founder of Geekcorps, will talk Friday on Geekcorps' efforts to bring digital independence to poor countries; he and several other geek activists took part today in a by-invitation roundtable discussion about spreading good through technology, and will be speaking together in a press conference tomorrow on the various ways computers and other high-tech tools can be used to promote prosperity worldwide.

Viva la revolucion! At a conference about extending and embracing proprietary software, the SCO-initiated legal fight over UNIX copyrights is surely on the minds of many attendees, but readers who have grown tired of the ongoing drama will be pleased that there's been little buzz here among attendees about SCO's legal actions. Is it because SCO's suit against IBM is simply irrelevant, or because most people are withholding judgment until SCO actually points out the code the company objects to? SCO is not forgotten, though: tomorrow afternoon, Bradley Kuhn, Chris DiBona, Alan Nugent and Lawrence Rosen will discuss the SCO case in a session called The IP Wars, which ought to get some blood pumping.

In the meantime, conference attendees will get to see something more fun and less contentious this evening: status reports on six different open source software projects: Perl (explained by Larry Wall), Python (Guido van Rossum), PHP (Shane Caraveo), MySQL (Monty Widenius and David Axmark), Apache (Greg Stein), and Linux (Theodore Ts'o).

akweboa164 asks: "I work as a lone developer creating small to medium scale PHP/MySQL websites for different clients. I have been doing this for about two years now, and have tried different things as far as website layout/architecture goes. With sites that use the fusebox architecture, front controller (thanks J2EE), N-tier, to having a simple 'include(config.php);' line at the top of every file, I am left with the feeling that all of the sites I have created are 50% elegance, and 50% nasty kludge. I am left with a sinking feeling because I know that they could be better, but I lack to expertise and experience to make them that way. I am looking for overall architecture that is open and fits within the constraints of PHP (ie. relying little on OO) and separates logic, makes updates easy, etc. I wanted to ask Slashdot's crowd of web developers what their most elegant code layout/design web solutions were, and what advice would you dish out to new developers, as well as seasoned professionals."

Simprini writes "After absolute ages of testing MySQL 4.0.x in various versions of BETA through GAMMA it looks like MySQL AB finally released MySQL 4.0.12 as ready for prime-time production use. I know my company has been waiting for a long time for this because our customers absolutely refused to use beta releases of this product. Query caching here we come."

Simprini writes "After absolute ages of testing MySQL 4.0.x in various versions of BETA through GAMMA it looks like MySQL AB finally released MySQL 4.0.12 as ready for prime-time production use. I know my company has been waiting for a long time for this because our customers absolutely refused to use beta releases of this product. Query caching here we come."

Disoculated writes "Is MySQL a threat to bigwigs? is the question asked in CNN's technology section. The article notes that MySQL is running perhaps 20% of the web databases but its revenue is merely 0.02%... yet the company is still making money and putting out an excellent product. Is this a sign that the database market is in for a drastic change? Of course, there's no mention of PostgreSQL or mSQL, but I guess that's typical."

Verity Stob writes "There is a turning point in the emergence of a programming methodology. It doesn't matter how big and popular the website is, nor how many papers have been published in the ACM journals or development magazines, nor even whether the first conferences have been a sell-out. A methodology hasn't made really made it until somebody has published a Proper Book. With Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ author Ivan Kiselev is bidding to drag AOP into the mainstream. He is motivated, he says in his introduction, by the recollection of the 25 odd years it took for the object-oriented concept to spread from its Simula origins in frosty Norway to being the everyday tool of Joe Coder. He aims to prevent this delay happening to AOP." Read on for Verity Stob's review of Kiselev's book. Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ author Ivan Kiselev pages 274 publisher SAMS rating Excellent reviewer Verity Stob ISBN 0672324105 summary Introduction to a new programming technique using an extension to Java

He has divided the book into four parts. Part I provides a brief sketch of AOP and introduces its concepts. AOP builds on OOP, asserting that we need a new programming entity called, wait for it, an aspect. Mr Kiselev's explanation of aspects reminded me of that bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when the planet Golgafrincham divided its population into A types (who were the leaders, the scientists and the great artists), the C types (who were the people who did all the actual making of things and doing of things), and the B types, who comprised everybody left over: telephone sanitizers, advertising account executives and hairdressers. As I understand Mr Kiselev, the AOP view of things is that objects and classes (A type thinkers) and low-level procedures and APIs (C type doers) can be nicely encapsulated using traditional components. But aspects, software's little hairdressers, get their fingers into everything, and until now there has been no way to encapsulate them. This of course is what AOP in general and specifically the AspectJ superset of the Java language set out to do.

AspectJ's eponymous aspects are constructs not unlike ordinary classes. Mr Kiselev has not resisted the temptation to make an aspect Hello World example, and it looks reassuringly so-whatish:

package intro;

import java.io.*;

public aspect HelloWorldA
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.out.println(Hello, world!);
}
}

Mr Kiselev then lays out his stall of New Things. A join point is any point in execution flow that AspectJ can identify and -- to get slightly ahead of ourselves -- execute some extra code. The most frequently used kind of join point being the call to a method. Pointcuts specify collections of join points; as a regular expression is to an instance of matched text, so a pointcut is to a matching join point. An advice (with horrid plural 'advices') is the code to be executed when a given pointcut is matched. If you are familiar with Eiffel's pre- and post-conditions, then you'll understand if I say that it is common for advices to run in the same way, topping and/or tailing the execution of a method. The differences are that aspects are specified from outside the method without touching the method or its class's code, and that aspects can be applied to multiple methods in one go. Mr Kiselev concludes this section of the book with a few simplistic examples of 'here is class A, here is class B' kind.

In Part II Mr Kiselev rolls up his sleeves and takes us through an extended, realistic example. I did wonder if perhaps it weren't a wee bit too realistic, as it is a miniature website application for news story submission and reading -- sort of Slashdot Ultralite -- all done using JSP and a MySQL database. Just explaining this setup, without even using any AspectJ, consumes a 15-page chapter. Since I am a C++ programmer who has not had any contact with JSP, I was initially anxious that I might not be able to follow this. However, recalling that www.[name withheld].com, the clumsiest, ugliest corporate website on the Internet, is programmed in JSP, I reasoned that if the dolts that programmed that site could understand JSP then it couldn't be very hard. So it proved.

The first example comprises adding password protection to the application. This is achieved by adding an advice that intercepts calls to doStartTag() methods. The advice can test if the user is logged in and, if he isn't, throw an exception that will dump him back at the login page. (Who says exceptions aren't 21st century gotos?) At this point Mr Kiselev admits that the cute 10-line implementation that he initially shows is in reality a non-starter; for one thing not all pages that must be secured define doStartTag() methods, for another the aspect can't reach an instance variable it needs to read because it is declared in protected scope. The second problem is easily overcome. AOP offers a mechanism by which extra classes can be bodged ('introduced' is the preferred verb in the AOP community) into the hierarchy as parents of existing classes. He uses this to add an accessor method for the field in question. The other problem is not so neatly smothered, and it is somewhat ruefully that Mr Kiselev produces his final, two-page solution. But I think that it is greatly to Mr K's credit that he does this - it tastes like programming in the real world as I have experienced it.

For the rest of Part II, Mr K demonstrates other applications of AOP using the AspectNews code. This includes Eiffelish design-by-contract stuff, improved exception handling, various debugging and tuning techniques (specifically logging, tracing and profiling) and a chapter on runtime improvements - stream buffering, database connection pooling and result caching - which show the AOP way to do things, usually where I would expect to be putting in proxy classes.

In part III we get down and dirty with the AspectJ language. This is the part where the book explains the obscure stuff: how to make a pointcut that picks up object preinitialization, or make an advice that goes off only when you are exiting a method on the back of an exception. I skimmed this bit - I guess it will become vital when I start using AspectJ in earnest. It looked good and clear on a flick through. A brief part IV contains some patterns, to give one a start when engaging AspectJ in earnest. Apparently it is horribly easy to create infinitely recursive situations, so if you here a faint popping sound from your machine it will be the stack colliding with the heap. There are seven appendices, supplying such things as a summary of the API in AspectJ's packages and hints on obtaining and using the Open Source supplementary tools mentioned in the book (Tomcat JSP container, MySQL database and Ant make replacement). AspectJ itself, now escaped from Xerox PARC, can be downloaded from the Eclipse website.

Complaints? None really. Oh all right, here's a nitpicklette because it's you: at page 75 Mr Kiselev adopts the irritating Internet habit of writing 'loosing' when he means 'losing'. Note to publisher SAMS proofreaders: do I win 25 cents?

For the rest, this is a lucid and readable book that describes the Next Big Methodology. I'm a bit alarmed at the prospect of squeezing new actions into the cracks of existing code, but I dare say I'll grow to love it.

A word of warning to the eager: since this technology is currently implemented as a species of preprocessor that relies on having all the source code available at once, so it is rather slow and probably isn't going into production shops for a while. There again, I seem to remember the comparable Cfront C++ compiler doing rather well, before we had platform-native C++ compilers.

And to the sceptics: if you think you can ignore AOP, don't forget the fate of the A and C type inhabitants of Golgafrincham, who having sent their B type telephone sanitizers into exile were all wiped out by a germ caught from a particularly dirty telephone.

You can purchase Aspect-Oriented Programming with AspectJ from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

replicant_deckard writes "This opinion piece I wrote to Open explains how dual licensing (simultaneous use of both GPL and proprietary license) works. Dual licensing gives you basically both the support of the community and a profitable Microsoft-like business model. Seems that this model used by MySQL and TrollTech is getting more popular. Now my question is where are the limits?"

Wee writes "I just saw two pretty nasty vulnerabilities in MySQL were announced today by a German company called e-matters. From the annoucenment: "We have discovered two flaws within the MySQL server that can be used by any MySQL user to crash the server. Furthermore one of the flaws can be used to bypass the MySQL password check or to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running mysqld. We have also discovered an arbitrary size heap overflow within the mysql client library and another vulnerability that allows to write '\0' to any memory address. Both flaws could allow DOS attacks against or arbitrary code execution within anything linked against libmysqlclient." Version 3.23.54 fixes the issues in 3.x. I couldn't find a patched version for the 4.0 beta."

PCM2 writes "It appears that MySQL AB has settled its dispute with NuSphere over use of the MySQL trademarks. CEO Marten Mickos has punctuated the occasion with a donation to the FSF -- but there's no mention of what the actual terms of the settlement were, and there's no statement on NuSphere's site either (yet)."

An anonymous reader writes "Coming close on the heels of their announcement that they've ported PostgreSQL to NetWare, Novell announced today that they will begin shipping MySQL with NetWare 6. Owing to customer and partner doubts about the GPL, Novell has chosen the commercial version of MySQL, rather than the GPL'ed version."

Slashback with a success story about video editing on Free software, and all-important updates on the MySQL dolphin, MP3 software for Red Hat (why?), the fast-rising Phoenix, and more, all below.

And you don't want your database being a Flipper. MySQL has finally announced the name of their logo dolphin, and the winner is... Sakila! The name, submitted by Ambrose Twebaze of Swaziland, was chosen from 6357 entries "because it represents the global reach of MySQL as well as the friendly, open nature of the company." Slashdot covered the contest back in January, and MySQL listed some of the more popular names submitted back in April.

Perverse incentives are the most fun. Mark Barnett writes in reference to the ongoing pets.com lawsuit story Update: 10/04 00:18 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "PetsWarehouse," not "pets.com.":

"I was one of the settling parties. I did not settle out of fear. I settled because he wanted me to run his banner on my website for 120 days. The settlement did not say anything about the number of times it had to run. I ran it once per day at about 4 AM EST for 120 days. It was my joke on him. I think I got the better deal. I ran the defense fund banner about 1.5 million times versus his 120 times."

Wings for a lizard. Espectr0 writes "Phoenix 0.2 has been released!. Improvements include the return of the sidebar, extensions management and web form autocomplete. It's also a little smaller and faster, and 0.3 will be released in about a week. Get the scoop here."

Unsolicited testimonial. boomerang_56 writes "Wanting to see what the fuss was about, I just installed Red Hat 8. For me, working IEEE1394 features are a must. It was nice to see that now I don't have to recompile the kernel just to have Firewire working. So I downloaded and compiled Kino, and was able to capture from my camcorder, and even control it, without the major tweaks I used to have to do. Then I found out that Cinelerra has been released at version 1.0!!! So I downloaded and installed it via RPM (Pentium II binaries). I had to install an old version of libstdc++-3, but that was easy. No "--force" or the other hassles we used to have to go through. So the first time I fired up Cinelerra, after changing the preferences for IEEE1394 capture, I was impressed to see it actually captured on the first try. I guess the bottom line for this submission is as a user I wanted to say "thanks" for all the developers working on this kind of thing. We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app. It's really nice to be able to have this kind of power in open source software and not have to boot to Windows just to edit video now. It's not easy enough for my mom yet, but the way things are going, it won't be long. Oh, links... get Cinelerra here (check out the screenshots too). Get Kino here."

Blinkenlampen ueber Paris. fluxdvd writes "In celebration of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, Project Blinkenlights has transformed Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. The system used to drive the display runs an embedded version of Linux.

Read the story at Linuxdevices.com. They have live streams of the building at night (Paris time) and replay the previous night's display druing the day. It's quite impressive :)"

We mentioned the plans for this display a few weeks ago.

Don't you hunger for a patent-free, royalty-free, better-at-identical-bitrate alternative? The release of Red Hat 8.0 included the notable, intentional ommission of MP3 software, a decision Red Hat made on the basis of possible patent and royalty problems.

Now SnowDeath writes "After two days of trying to get my ALSA install to work correctly in RedHat 8.0 (Psyche), I finally headed over to the xmms website to see if there were any known bugs with ALSA. Low and behold, the first thing my eyes read tells how RedHat Software decided to not include the mp3 plugin in their xmms install in Psyche in fear of pending patent problems. So, do not despair, there is an rpm "update" for this particular problem on the xmms site."

Slashback with a success story about video editing on Free software, and all-important updates on the MySQL dolphin, MP3 software for Red Hat (why?), the fast-rising Phoenix, and more, all below.

And you don't want your database being a Flipper. MySQL has finally announced the name of their logo dolphin, and the winner is... Sakila! The name, submitted by Ambrose Twebaze of Swaziland, was chosen from 6357 entries "because it represents the global reach of MySQL as well as the friendly, open nature of the company." Slashdot covered the contest back in January, and MySQL listed some of the more popular names submitted back in April.

Perverse incentives are the most fun. Mark Barnett writes in reference to the ongoing pets.com lawsuit story Update: 10/04 00:18 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "PetsWarehouse," not "pets.com.":

"I was one of the settling parties. I did not settle out of fear. I settled because he wanted me to run his banner on my website for 120 days. The settlement did not say anything about the number of times it had to run. I ran it once per day at about 4 AM EST for 120 days. It was my joke on him. I think I got the better deal. I ran the defense fund banner about 1.5 million times versus his 120 times."

Wings for a lizard. Espectr0 writes "Phoenix 0.2 has been released!. Improvements include the return of the sidebar, extensions management and web form autocomplete. It's also a little smaller and faster, and 0.3 will be released in about a week. Get the scoop here."

Unsolicited testimonial. boomerang_56 writes "Wanting to see what the fuss was about, I just installed Red Hat 8. For me, working IEEE1394 features are a must. It was nice to see that now I don't have to recompile the kernel just to have Firewire working. So I downloaded and compiled Kino, and was able to capture from my camcorder, and even control it, without the major tweaks I used to have to do. Then I found out that Cinelerra has been released at version 1.0!!! So I downloaded and installed it via RPM (Pentium II binaries). I had to install an old version of libstdc++-3, but that was easy. No "--force" or the other hassles we used to have to go through. So the first time I fired up Cinelerra, after changing the preferences for IEEE1394 capture, I was impressed to see it actually captured on the first try. I guess the bottom line for this submission is as a user I wanted to say "thanks" for all the developers working on this kind of thing. We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app. It's really nice to be able to have this kind of power in open source software and not have to boot to Windows just to edit video now. It's not easy enough for my mom yet, but the way things are going, it won't be long. Oh, links... get Cinelerra here (check out the screenshots too). Get Kino here."

Blinkenlampen ueber Paris. fluxdvd writes "In celebration of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, Project Blinkenlights has transformed Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. The system used to drive the display runs an embedded version of Linux.

Read the story at Linuxdevices.com. They have live streams of the building at night (Paris time) and replay the previous night's display druing the day. It's quite impressive :)"

We mentioned the plans for this display a few weeks ago.

Don't you hunger for a patent-free, royalty-free, better-at-identical-bitrate alternative? The release of Red Hat 8.0 included the notable, intentional ommission of MP3 software, a decision Red Hat made on the basis of possible patent and royalty problems.

Now SnowDeath writes "After two days of trying to get my ALSA install to work correctly in RedHat 8.0 (Psyche), I finally headed over to the xmms website to see if there were any known bugs with ALSA. Low and behold, the first thing my eyes read tells how RedHat Software decided to not include the mp3 plugin in their xmms install in Psyche in fear of pending patent problems. So, do not despair, there is an rpm "update" for this particular problem on the xmms site."

Slashback with a success story about video editing on Free software, and all-important updates on the MySQL dolphin, MP3 software for Red Hat (why?), the fast-rising Phoenix, and more, all below.

And you don't want your database being a Flipper. MySQL has finally announced the name of their logo dolphin, and the winner is... Sakila! The name, submitted by Ambrose Twebaze of Swaziland, was chosen from 6357 entries "because it represents the global reach of MySQL as well as the friendly, open nature of the company." Slashdot covered the contest back in January, and MySQL listed some of the more popular names submitted back in April.

Perverse incentives are the most fun. Mark Barnett writes in reference to the ongoing pets.com lawsuit story Update: 10/04 00:18 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "PetsWarehouse," not "pets.com.":

"I was one of the settling parties. I did not settle out of fear. I settled because he wanted me to run his banner on my website for 120 days. The settlement did not say anything about the number of times it had to run. I ran it once per day at about 4 AM EST for 120 days. It was my joke on him. I think I got the better deal. I ran the defense fund banner about 1.5 million times versus his 120 times."

Wings for a lizard. Espectr0 writes "Phoenix 0.2 has been released!. Improvements include the return of the sidebar, extensions management and web form autocomplete. It's also a little smaller and faster, and 0.3 will be released in about a week. Get the scoop here."

Unsolicited testimonial. boomerang_56 writes "Wanting to see what the fuss was about, I just installed Red Hat 8. For me, working IEEE1394 features are a must. It was nice to see that now I don't have to recompile the kernel just to have Firewire working. So I downloaded and compiled Kino, and was able to capture from my camcorder, and even control it, without the major tweaks I used to have to do. Then I found out that Cinelerra has been released at version 1.0!!! So I downloaded and installed it via RPM (Pentium II binaries). I had to install an old version of libstdc++-3, but that was easy. No "--force" or the other hassles we used to have to go through. So the first time I fired up Cinelerra, after changing the preferences for IEEE1394 capture, I was impressed to see it actually captured on the first try. I guess the bottom line for this submission is as a user I wanted to say "thanks" for all the developers working on this kind of thing. We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app. It's really nice to be able to have this kind of power in open source software and not have to boot to Windows just to edit video now. It's not easy enough for my mom yet, but the way things are going, it won't be long. Oh, links... get Cinelerra here (check out the screenshots too). Get Kino here."

Blinkenlampen ueber Paris. fluxdvd writes "In celebration of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, Project Blinkenlights has transformed Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. The system used to drive the display runs an embedded version of Linux.

Read the story at Linuxdevices.com. They have live streams of the building at night (Paris time) and replay the previous night's display druing the day. It's quite impressive :)"

We mentioned the plans for this display a few weeks ago.

Don't you hunger for a patent-free, royalty-free, better-at-identical-bitrate alternative? The release of Red Hat 8.0 included the notable, intentional ommission of MP3 software, a decision Red Hat made on the basis of possible patent and royalty problems.

Now SnowDeath writes "After two days of trying to get my ALSA install to work correctly in RedHat 8.0 (Psyche), I finally headed over to the xmms website to see if there were any known bugs with ALSA. Low and behold, the first thing my eyes read tells how RedHat Software decided to not include the mp3 plugin in their xmms install in Psyche in fear of pending patent problems. So, do not despair, there is an rpm "update" for this particular problem on the xmms site."

magellan writes "InfoWorld has an article reporting how both IBM and Microsoft are dissing MySQL. While it is understandable from Microsoft, it is interesting that IBM, who often claims to be a defender of Open Source Software, would be so negative. Sun Microsystems and Yahoo are quoted as providing positive opinions on MySQL." On the credit site for MySQL, though, Bingo Foo writes "MySQL has finally answered its detractors who complained about its lack of transactions. A press release today reveals that InnoDB is now fully integrated with the stock MySQL product, allowing ACID-compliant transactions, rollback, and crash recovery. Let the religious wars begin!"

Geekboy(Wizard) writes: "MySQL has been used as a database for many sites and products. The U.S. Census Bureau, Slashdot, Yahoo Finance, and many other high-traffic web sites use MySQL for their database needs. It is a popular choice for databases, as it is GPL'd and thus free from costly licenses. If you need to use it in a proprietary application, you can purchase a non-GPL'd version from MySQL AB." Read on for Geekboy's review of Managing and Using MySQL: Second Edition, which he describes as "the only thing you /need/ to make a usable database." Managing and Using MySQL: Second Edition author George Reese, Randy Jay Yarger and Tim King, with Hugh E. Williams pages 425 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Peter Hessler ISBN 0596002114 summary Step by step tutorial to using MySQL, with included tools, and your favorites.

Managing and Using MySQL: 2nd Edition assumes that the reader has a little knowledge of databases, although some of the commands are difficult to get your head around until you have a database to test them on. Sample commands, and output for them are shown in the book, but a sample database isn't shown until chapter 9. MySQL took me through 'MySQL land' with the greatest of ease. Aside from the lack of a test database in the beginning, everything was very well laid out. It started with the basics, and worked up to full implementation and administration.

Part I introduces the reader to MySQL. It begins with a nice history, design elements, features and what you would want to use MySQL with. Nicely detailed instructions for downloading, and installing the current version. Information is provided for Unix, and Windows systems, with examples for FreeBSD 4 and Windows 2000. Basic SQL commands are presented, with sample queries and relevant results.

Part II introduces the reader to tuning, securing and designing the database. Several pitfalls are described, along with instructions for avoiding them. The realm of tuning is divided into application tuning, database tuning, and operating system/hardware tuning. Security is discussed from all aspects, but a database that has security concerns will need extensive testing and evaluation. Database design starts with the design on paper, with both the theoretical, and practical aspects. Once the paper design is drawn out, MySQL assists the reader through the actual making of the database.

Part III describes integrating the database into your favorite programming/scripting language. In the opening paragraph of chapter 12, The C API, the author states: "In this book, we examine several different programming languages: Python, Java, Perl, PHP and C. Among these languages, C is by far the most challenging." The information was presented in a way that readers who are new to C would have small difficulties with, and that intermediate and advanced users would find quite useful. The authors presented enough information, that I was able to write programs that interfaced with MySQL in less than 10 minutes. Perl scripts are presented in the same way. Knowledge of the language you will be integrating MySQL into is necessary, but the book presents and explains the rest of the information.

Part IV is the reference portion of the book. All great books that teach contain a reference section, and this book is no exception. The basic SQL syntax and command set are described, as well as the data types, numeric, string, date, and complex. Operations and functions are explained, as well as their order preference. The PHP API, the C API, and the Python DB-API are also fleshed out in nice detail.

Overall, the authors have an excellent introduction to SQL databases, and MySQL. Full examples are included for each topic, with full explanations. The only things I would change, would be to have a sample database in the beginning of the book, and to have a copy of that database online.

Table of Contents
Part I (Chapters 1 - 4) Introduction
1 MySQL
2 Installation
3 SQL According to MySQL
4 Database Administration
Part II (Chapters 5 - 7) MySQL Administration
5 Performance Turning
6 Security
7 Database Design
Part III (Chapters 8 - 14) MySQL Programming
8 Database Applications
9 Perl
10 Python
11 PHP
12 C API
13 Java
14 Extending MySQL
Part IV (Chapters 15 - 20) MySQL Reference
15 SQL Syntax for MySQL
16 MySQL Data Types
17 Operations and Functions
18 MySQL PHP API Reference
19 C Reference
20 The Python DB-API
Index

You can purchase Managing and Using MySQL: Second Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

JayBonci writes: "In case you all missed it, everyone's favorite database engine, mysql is having the name the mySql dolphin contest, and everyone is invited. Nothing like a million suggestions to choose from to help them out. Not only that, but it might be a good time to help them choose a better name than some other attempts at open marketing submissions." Bill! Thom! Nguyen! Samwise! Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate!

JayBonci writes: "In case you all missed it, everyone's favorite database engine, mysql is having the name the mySql dolphin contest, and everyone is invited. Nothing like a million suggestions to choose from to help them out. Not only that, but it might be a good time to help them choose a better name than some other attempts at open marketing submissions." Bill! Thom! Nguyen! Samwise! Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate!

The updates tonight (below) are on the industrially appealing sliMP3 player (get in line, buddy), the U.S. government's continuing War on Copyright Violation, the pricy but cool-sounding Audigy sound card from Creative Labs, what you'll find at mysql.org, and more. Enjoy!

It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. GeekLife.com writes: "After 20 months, Ford has ended (technically "deferred") their "Model E" free computer and discounted Internet access for their employees (announced here and discussed here). Employees who already have computers will be able to keep them, and their Internet service will not be affected."

I sure hope that Ford (like many large companies) at the very least gives Ford employees dibs on any computers that are being replaced within the company to make up for each new round of Windows.

Sounds like a slimple decision, if you like the look. rockwood writes: "We've all been waiting for this for quite some time, but it appears that now for only $269.00 Slim Devices, Inc. is now shipping their sliMP3. Though they state quantity is limited, due to a component shortage. Last minute Christmas gift for the tech on your list!"

For that price, it better read aloud in a very sexy voice. The other day we linked to a review of the new all-singing, all-dancing Audigy sound card on 3D Spotlight; in case that wasn't enough to help you choose whether to spend or save your money, LinkDJ writes: "This card is great for those with older sound card in their systems, but if you have a Sound Blaster 5.1, there is no real need to upgrade. The cool things about this card are that it has integrated SB1394 Firewire, thus eliminating the need for a separate Firewire add-in card. Read the full review."

WhoseSQL? gwynnebaer writes "A friend of mine just pointed out to me that the contentious www.mysql.org now points to the main MySQL AB site. If you remember, there was much gnashing of lawsuits over trademark issues this past summer. So, looks like at least one part of the battle is over, but for the life of me, I can't find any articles or newsworthy information to explain what happened. Anyone know the scoop?"

Free software might be a good way to lessen your legal liability. MooRogue writes: "Looks like the Feds are raiding Universities and corporate offices for more pirated software. They're questioning people and seizing computers to gather digital evidence in 'Operation Buccaneer.' Here's the article on the NY Times (free reg, blah blah)"

egerlach writes "All you DB admins out there might be interested to know that MySQL 4.0 has finally been released! It's only 4.0.0 alpha, but you can download it here. You can also check out a full list of changes."

egerlach writes "All you DB admins out there might be interested to know that MySQL 4.0 has finally been released! It's only 4.0.0 alpha, but you can download it here. You can also check out a full list of changes."

egerlach writes "All you DB admins out there might be interested to know that MySQL 4.0 has finally been released! It's only 4.0.0 alpha, but you can download it here. You can also check out a full list of changes."

pHaze writes: "Michael 'Monty' Wideneus has just released MySQL 4.0 Alpha. Downloadable here. This has got some really cool new features -- my favourites being built-in InnoDB support and better support for MATCH/AGAINST queries on fulltext indexes (really fast if you're writing a search engine)." And corz writes: "The Samba Team announced the release of Samba 2.2.2 on Saturday. Among the new features include the winbind daemon, which "allows UNIX systems that implement the name service switch (nss) to be entered into a Windows NT/2000 domain and use the Domain controller for all user and group enumeration. This allows a Samba server added to a Windows domain to serve file and print services with *NO* local users needed in /etc/passwd and /etc/group - all users and groups are read directly from the Windows domain controller." Sounds great to me. Jump to the mirrors and grab it now."

Water Paradox writes: "A couple of years ago our company was firmly entrenched in the Microsoft way of doing business. All of our development was in Visual Basic and related proprietary tools. Open Source / Free Software advocates were a minority. Last week we made the switch from VB to Open Source development (Apache, PHP, my SQL, etc) on a Win32 box. This decision was made quickly, but came after eight months of evaluation. I wrote a short article about it here: Moving from Microsoft to Open Source, which may be useful to other folks contemplating the same switch. Yes, we're even proposing Win32 Apache as our default server, since it has been reasonably stable for us over eight months."