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http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/miscellaneo us-functions.html INET_ATON/NTOA convert between ints and IPv4 strings. You can use it in a view if you're really that lazy, and I guess you are since you didn't do your fact-checking to begin with. As for CIDR blocks, they're just a bitmask on a u32 int. You do at least know what a bitmask is, don't you...?

Yep.

Some shortcuts to graphs:

Performance vs. concurrency
Performance vs. CPU count

Apparently MySQL clustering doesn't help so much either.

I can't help thinking that MySQL is popular for much the same reasons that Windows or Visual Basic are popular: simplicity. However, solid scaleable applications require that you to take off the training wheels.

Wow, more MySQL lies on Slashdot. It's amazing the amount of misinformation here about MySQL.

> MySQL does not have tablespaces,

Yet another lie. Here's what I'm using on one of my systems about six months ago to create a tablespace under MySQL:

CREATE TABLESPACE ts_1
    ADD DATAFILE 'data_1.dat'
    USE LOGFILE GROUP lg_1
    INITIAL_SIZE 32G
    ENGINE NDB;

And to move a table into that tablespace:

ALTER TABLE user TABLESPACE ts_1 STORAGE DISK ENGINE NDB;

The documentation:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-clust er-disk-data.html

Again, why is there so much absolute BS posted here about MySQL?

It doesn't cease to amaze me, when the Mysql croud argues that "you don't really need those pesky integrity stuff, it just slows down the database."

THERE IS NO ODBC FOR LINUX (or equivalent).

Untrue.

The client library is GPL. That means you cannot create a commercial program that uses it without using the commercial licensed version. Which is $200 per client

You can't even create a library and not ship mysql - the mysql site is very clear that they consider distributing a program that *uses* mysql as being exactly the same as distributing mysql itself:

http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/comme rcial-license.html

Typical examples of MySQL distribution include: ...
        * Selling software that requires customers to install MySQL themselves on their own machines.

Specifically:

        * If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries.

This makes mysql unusable for anything except large products. Our entire product only cost $70 for the single user version. No way in hell we're upping the price by $200 a copy.

MySQL speed will really depend on the database engine you use (MyISAM or InnoDB do not perform the same!). PostgreSQL performance is pretty much consistent across platforms.

On the HA side, PostgreSQL has maybe less options: Slony/I (http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/slony1/) for master/slave or Sequoia (http://sequoia.continuent.org/) for multi-master.
MySQL offers MySQL replication (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replicatio n.html) for master/slave, MySQL cluster (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-clus ter.html) for those who want to switch to a new storage engine (NDB) or Sequoia (URL:http://sequoia.continuent.org/) for multi-master with transparent failover.

MySQL speed will really depend on the database engine you use (MyISAM or InnoDB do not perform the same!). PostgreSQL performance is pretty much consistent across platforms.

On the HA side, PostgreSQL has maybe less options: Slony/I (http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/slony1/) for master/slave or Sequoia (http://sequoia.continuent.org/) for multi-master.
MySQL offers MySQL replication (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replicatio n.html) for master/slave, MySQL cluster (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-clus ter.html) for those who want to switch to a new storage engine (NDB) or Sequoia (URL:http://sequoia.continuent.org/) for multi-master with transparent failover.

'As a final nail in your baseless "theory", do you really think Google would be better off buying support for MySQL and Redhat than rolling their own as they do? Not a chance.'

Ahem: http://www.mysql.com/customers/customer.php?id=75 . Customer = paying MySQL.

If they are a major player, they probably have a support contract with MySQL. That is not a substitute for excellent in-house people when you get big needs but it is a useful supplement to them. Google isn't spending the money just to get a tax write-off.

Here's a copy of MySQL's official response to this story:

-----

MySQL's Commitment to Debian
December 13, 2006

MySQL AB apologizes for any miscommunication that may have implied that the
MySQL database does not run on the popular Debian Linux operating system, or
that the company does not offer technical support for MySQL Enterprise
subscribers using Debian.

We have a strong commitment to Debian and other forms of Linux - for both
open source community developers and corporate enterprises.

The Debian Linux operating system is an active, growing and successful
platform for the MySQL database to run on.

Our company offers freely-available downloads of the MySQL Community Server
in source code and binary format at
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html for Debian and other flavors
of Linux -- including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. -- as well as Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OSX,
Solaris, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IBM AIX and SCO OpenServer.

For paying customers, our company also offers 'MySQL Enterprise', a
comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools,
and premium support services.

Since its official launch in October, we have delivered versions of the
MySQL Enterprise Server software for RHEL, SLES and a general-purpose
version that runs on other forms of Linux -- including Debian. Starting in
Q1 2007, we will also deliver regular software updates for the Debian and
Ubuntu platforms as well.

As in the past, MySQL AB continues to offer paid technical support for
customers running MySQL on Debian and other versions of Linux. This is
available as part of our MySQL Enterprise subscription service. A complete
list of MySQL Enterprise supported platforms is available here:
http://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/en terprise.html

We will continue to monitor the popularity of other operating systems and
user requests when considering extending our platform support in the future.

Again, MySQL AB regrets any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have
caused.

-----

James Day, Support Engineer, MySQL AB

Here's a copy of MySQL's official response to this story:

-----

MySQL's Commitment to Debian
December 13, 2006

MySQL AB apologizes for any miscommunication that may have implied that the
MySQL database does not run on the popular Debian Linux operating system, or
that the company does not offer technical support for MySQL Enterprise
subscribers using Debian.

We have a strong commitment to Debian and other forms of Linux - for both
open source community developers and corporate enterprises.

The Debian Linux operating system is an active, growing and successful
platform for the MySQL database to run on.

Our company offers freely-available downloads of the MySQL Community Server
in source code and binary format at
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html for Debian and other flavors
of Linux -- including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. -- as well as Microsoft Windows, Macintosh OSX,
Solaris, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IBM AIX and SCO OpenServer.

For paying customers, our company also offers 'MySQL Enterprise', a
comprehensive set of production-tested software, proactive monitoring tools,
and premium support services.

Since its official launch in October, we have delivered versions of the
MySQL Enterprise Server software for RHEL, SLES and a general-purpose
version that runs on other forms of Linux -- including Debian. Starting in
Q1 2007, we will also deliver regular software updates for the Debian and
Ubuntu platforms as well.

As in the past, MySQL AB continues to offer paid technical support for
customers running MySQL on Debian and other versions of Linux. This is
available as part of our MySQL Enterprise subscription service. A complete
list of MySQL Enterprise supported platforms is available here:
http://www.mysql.com/support/supportedplatforms/en terprise.html

We will continue to monitor the popularity of other operating systems and
user requests when considering extending our platform support in the future.

Again, MySQL AB regrets any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have
caused.

-----

James Day, Support Engineer, MySQL AB

The article here on Slashdot is a little bit misleading. You still can get support from them. Them main part is this:
Will you support MySQL Binaries built by third-party vendors? No.
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/supportpolicies /policies-04.html#q04

The person who wrote this article wanted to take the binaries provided by Debian. And this doesn't work. But if you take the binaries from MySQL you should still get support.

Test cluster slower than single machine

The real problem? "MySQL Quietly Drops Support..." ? Ok - so what should they do? Place posters all around your city saying "WE DROP SUPPORT FOR DEBIAN USERS!!!"?

I think the point is that they haven't made it clear, even on their website that they have made a business decision to ignore everything but Red Hat and Suse. From the story: "We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.'". So a company got bitten by using a generic (Debian) Linux then asking for support and finding out that "generic" means anything but.

They really should make some sort of statement, even if it's market spun, e.g. "...for the benefit of our enterprise customers we are concentrating on supporting the two most popular commercial distributions... we expect third-party support companies and the active MySQL community to continue supporting less popular and non-commercial distributions". (P.S. for the benefit of anyone flicking through, I made that up!)

they will likely migrate their existing SuSE and Red Hat installations to Unbreakable Linux.

Perhaps Oracle customers faced with this sour ultimatum might find it attractive to keep their current platform and try MySQL (more flexible, faster, lower costs) or Greenplum (100x as fast as Oracle) instead...

Things don't always pan out for the faltering Emperor.

MySQL Cluster? Check this link:
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?25,93181,93181

GP asked a simple question about what replication strategies are used by pg shops, and some asshole like you responds in a tone like yours.

You could have just answered the question. It wasn't necessary to be a dick about it.

Also, you might be interested to read a bit about MySQL Cluster which is different from their replication solution. Pretty neat stuff.

Also, I do agree with you that GP gave no indication that MySQL was failing to meet their needs. MySQL doesn't meet everybody's needs and neither does pgsql (or Oracle for that matter). But changing databases for "fun" is a horrible use of resources.

Mysql has a GPL/Commercial dual licensing model. And because connection to mysql means linking to the client, which is "derivative work" in terms of the GPL, you can only use GPL'ed software with mysql. Unless you pay them to use their commercial license of course.

Well, that's GPL. You appear to be arguing that GPL is only "semi-free" (your own words).

But if you don't like GPL, MySQL allows you to use any of the following licenses with clients:

http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/foss- exception.html

Not to mention the semi-free open-source license of mysql.

GPL?

Equivalents to Query Browser and DBDesigner4/Workbench.

Use them. They rock. Query Browser does everything I used in phpMyAdmin and much more. DBDesigner4 and and it's (currently rather unstable) replacement, Workbench, are extremely useful for designing/modifying databases. I prefer PostgreSQL for speed, stability, and features, but I develop in MySQL just because of those tools.

Equivalents to Query Browser and DBDesigner4/Workbench.

Use them. They rock. Query Browser does everything I used in phpMyAdmin and much more. DBDesigner4 and and it's (currently rather unstable) replacement, Workbench, are extremely useful for designing/modifying databases. I prefer PostgreSQL for speed, stability, and features, but I develop in MySQL just because of those tools.

Slony also doesn't replicate "large objects"; I don't know what they are,

You're a DBA and you don't know what large objects are?

but as a MySQL admin

Oh, right. Not really a DBA

Let's see:

• "pgpool -- Max 2 servers, and they're not really in sync---commands like now() or rand() will be executed independently on the mirrored machines, causing them to have different data." One: keep your clocks in sync. Two: how can you tell if rand() isn't "in sync"? You run it on each server and you get different results? You know what rand() means, right?
• "Slony I -- DB schema changes not replicated, nor are "large objects"." One: how often does your schema change, and do you really need automatic replication? Two: If you don't even know what large objects are, why do you have a problem with this?
• "PGCluster -- Synchronous multi-master. We don't want synchronous, and don't need multi-master. Documentation patchy, didn't appear to be currently maintained." So don't use it.
• "CommandPrompt "Mammoth" -- Documentation "in the works". PostgreSQL 8.0.7. Tables can't use "inheritance". Schema changes not replicated (at least not table creation, not sure about the rest). Only 1 db replicated, not all dbs. Tables must have primary keys. Have to list tables in config file." One: MySQL doesn't have inheritence, you're not losing anything. Two: see above about oft-changing schemas. (Otherwise, this sounds like a very high-level replication of tables, probably using simple scripts or triggers. If it doesn't suit, don't use.)

Others listed are older and not relevant.

I just fear that when replication is done in a third-party fashion, it loses the tight integration with the dbms necessary to make it work truly seamlessly, and that it isn't maintained as well as the core product.

Funny, I fear a database that has only rudimentary data integrity checks. Here's the real question for you: Why do you need replication? It doesn't magically work the way you think it does, even in MySQL (see under "Problems Not Solved"). Quote: "MySQL's replication isn't the ideal vehicle for transmitting real-time or nearly real-time data". Every replicated database can lose synchronization and no one can honestly guarantee otherwise. Even Oracle.

Slony-I will pretty much give you what you already have. My guess is that you don't really need replication at all; hot standby servers will suffice in case of failure. The rest comes down to query tuning or faster hardware (or a database that does faster nontrivial queries, like PostgreSQL). (And don't complain about costs if you're already buying servers for replication. If you have real data that's making you money here, hardware is cheap; if you don't, you probably don't really need any of this to begin with.) If you need true realtime synchronization, replication is not an option.

Finally, while I'm not a MySQL fan, since you don't seem to give any real reason for wanting to migrate, why bother? You already have a working system and hardware investment. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it comes time to upgrade down the line, and the features justify the move, then maybe consider it.

In summary: meh.

Check out MAXDB [1] (no it's has nothing to do with the regular MySQL stuff - except the name - the engineers are payed by SAP and sit in Berlin). It is solid, scalable, has a decent speed. It has all the enterprise features like triggers etc. and is very easy to administrate and use. It has some nice features like no need for reorgs, no tablespaces (just data files/raw devices in which the tables are stored in) etc.

It is out there as open sources (GPL) since 2000.

[1] http://www.mysql.com/products/maxdb/

http://www.mysql.com/support/

MySql5 is fast, stable, secure, reliable, supports clusters VERY well and you can buy support just like any of the "Big Boys". My company developed a claim management system for Insurance companies and its ALL on mysql. And yes, we have a full time DBA, any BIG app running off DBs needs one. For us what was the difference? Well, licencing fees during the first 2 years of development for one. Now whats the difference? There is none. We still dont pay any licencing fees. We still have a DBA. If we were runing Oracle or SQL$, we would still need one, maybe have to pay him more, and probably have to constantly send him to really expensive training also...(Any DBAs want to comment on that one?) Im not saying Oracle is bad. its an entity. its almost alive... if you're not running on the TOP-OF-THE-LINE server, its rather slow.... SQL$, thats another discussion....

Anyways enough of my blah blah blah.

The defacto is this; In the end, we must go with the Tried and True products for mission critical systems. Well, Google uses mysql, hows that for tried and true?

I couldn't figure out in your gibberish how Oracle is cheaper than MySQL, nor could I understand how you got wacky errors out of MySQL. I've never seen any. SQL works as it should. It links up very well with other software, including ODBC connections, etc. Again, I couldn't figure out from your gibberish what you are really trying to say. MySQL supports their product. You can support it yourself, or you can pay them for support. Its not really a very hard concept. If the software didn't work, people (eg NASA) wouldn't use it. ...btw, NASA wasn't hypothetical, they really do use it. http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 51.html

I'm trying out MySQL's own administrator now, although admiteddly I haven't done anything besides adding a few permissions I needed:

http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/

I still find Microsofts' Enterprise Manager to be excellent, very intuitive.

I had to use Oracle's Java equivalent at uni a few times, and it was painfully slow and ugly (I've been told it has been re-done).

Hey!

Its's MySQL AB, not MySQL AG. It's a swedish company and not a german one!

You can buy support 24x7 AND you can play golf (or whatever) with David Axmark, Allan Larsson and Michael "Monty" Widenius. See http://mysql.com/

"Most open source database products, including MySQL, seem to require quite a bit of digging and cobbling together to set up and maintain."
What are you talking about. MySQL can be installed by a monkey and is well documented. Often you don't even have to do anything to install it but check a box on your Linux installer.
If you must have a GUI here http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/mysqlgui/ is one of many.
I am glad that you like SQL Server. If it fits your needs more power to you. However MySQL really isn't hard to use or setup. Postgres is a little more difficult but I actually prefer it for most of my projects.
Ease if install shouldn't really matter a lot for a Database server. Hopefully it isn't something you do on a daily basis.

"German Lotto Company Plays it Safe with MySQL Cluster"

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 1188.html

And their application is not critical either, just win or lose.

CC.

GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it.

Surely, you may want to talk to the CEOs of MySQL and Qt developers Trolltech, who release their projects under the GPL and do turn a profit. In the case of Sun, as others already have mentioned, they make money on the hardware, and commoditising software is only good for them.

Of course, these are corporations. Speaking of private persons, what about a certain Linus Torvalds, who is now fairly well-off?

poot_rootbeer asks why all the comments are in one table, when the data access pattern is such that 90% of our hits are on only the most recent entries in that table.

The answer is that we used to do it this way but it's a huge pain. In 2000 we converted from having two tables for 'stories', recent and archived, and merged them together. The performance hit was not big, and it made the code so much simpler it was a no-brainer.

It's the database's job to cache properly whether we split the table or not, and the database does that just fine. The only performance problem could be when there is a rush of inserts, or updates to the same sets of rows, spanning both newer and older portions of the table, and that just doesn't happen.

If we did want to do this we wouldn't split the tables manually; the code complexity is too high a price to pay. In MySQL 5.0 we would use a MERGE engine, which has issues of its own but would involve smaller changes to our code. That's still not worth it for us. What we're probably going to do is wait for MySQL 5.1 to get out of beta and then do some performance testing on tables partitioned by date and see if that gains us anything. For example, a SELECT on our comments table could be limited with a WHERE clause to only retrieve rows with a date >= the discussion object's date, which for 90% of our queries MySQL 5.1 could optimize to only look at the most recent partition. If the gains turn out to be significant, then since partitioning involves very limited code changes, we'll probably do that. Generally speaking, though, database performance is not a problem for us. So far our main bottlenecks have been CPU and RAM on the webheads. As long as we don't do anything stupid our database performance has been fine, though, as today proves, we are quite capable of being stupid.

[ Parent ]

poot_rootbeer asks why all the comments are in one table, when the data access pattern is such that 90% of our hits are on only the most recent entries in that table.

The answer is that we used to do it this way but it's a huge pain. In 2000 we converted from having two tables for 'stories', recent and archived, and merged them together. The performance hit was not big, and it made the code so much simpler it was a no-brainer.

It's the database's job to cache properly whether we split the table or not, and the database does that just fine. The only performance problem could be when there is a rush of inserts, or updates to the same sets of rows, spanning both newer and older portions of the table, and that just doesn't happen.

If we did want to do this we wouldn't split the tables manually; the code complexity is too high a price to pay. In MySQL 5.0 we would use a MERGE engine, which has issues of its own but would involve smaller changes to our code. That's still not worth it for us. What we're probably going to do is wait for MySQL 5.1 to get out of beta and then do some performance testing on tables partitioned by date and see if that gains us anything. For example, a SELECT on our comments table could be limited with a WHERE clause to only retrieve rows with a date >= the discussion object's date, which for 90% of our queries MySQL 5.1 could optimize to only look at the most recent partition. If the gains turn out to be significant, then since partitioning involves very limited code changes, we'll probably do that. Generally speaking, though, database performance is not a problem for us. So far our main bottlenecks have been CPU and RAM on the webheads. As long as we don't do anything stupid our database performance has been fine, though, as today proves, we are quite capable of being stupid.

[ Parent ]

Some of you are asking which comment it was that got the cid 16,777,216. The answer is that none did. For redundancy, Slashdot is now running multiple-master replication which skips values for auto-increment. Our db-1 assigns odd-numbered primary key IDs, and db-2 assigns even-numbered. Right now writes are going to db-1 so newly created rows will have only odd IDs.

The comment that got 2**24-1 was this one, if anyone cares :)

Sorry about the inconvenience, everyone.

This kind of stuff comes up on slashdot all the time, but I've yet to see any justification for it. PHP might not be that fast or stable under windows but under *nix it's very fast and stable. Mysql might not be the right choice for a fortune 500 financial system but its fast and stable for most web apps. Have you ever bothered to see who actually uses it?
Hmm. Lets see.... Mysql's website claims to have the following companies on board del.icio.us digg flickr wikipedia technorati trulia yahoo and craigslist. Also last time I checked slashdot was also using mysql, and just off the top of my head wikipedia and flickr are both PHP sites.

Except not really because mysql now have SAP DB which is the backend for their maxdb product which is a _LOT_ better than anything SleepyCat ever produced.
My guess is that as soon as SleepyCat becomes a problem they will just merge the maxdb code into the standard mysql database and probably the only reason they haven't yet is that they are making too much money supporting all SAP customers.

Wake me up when MythTV doesn't depend on a toy database and starts supporting real databases.

Transaction support needs to be in the storage engine and it's useful to have storage engines that are optimised for non-transactional storage. Whether a particular table needs transaction support is a choice for the application developer, not the database developers, since it's the application developer who knows what the application needs.

James Day, Support Engineer, MySQL AB.

Words that are in over 50% of rows are considered stop words, and not indexed. You must recompile MySQL to change this.

False. The only thing you have to do to overrule this 50% threshold is add "... IN BOOLEAN MODE" to your full text query. See the manual.

JP

I don't know of any other company that develops GPL code that asks users to sign an additional license.

When and why did you decide to get in bed with the SCO Group?

As announced in your September 2005 press release: http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_ 948.html

Your website touts you as having the lowest defects per KLOC by up to 12 times the industry standard, what do you attribute as the leading factor to your success in this respect? Since cold cash is the traditional method, how do you incentivise code quality in an open source product?

MySQL doesn't support transactions? Boy, they really fooled the shit out of me! I must have been using something else in the last few applications I wrote using MySQL that allowed me to rollback my non-transactions. It must also not support prepared statements because I sure haven't been using those to eliminate SQL injections, either.

The people that modded the parent post Insightful are idiots. BLAM THIS BLATANTLY FALSE TRASH, PLEASE!

MySQL doesn't support transactions? Boy, they really fooled the shit out of me! I must have been using something else in the last few applications I wrote using MySQL that allowed me to rollback my non-transactions. It must also not support prepared statements because I sure haven't been using those to eliminate SQL injections, either.

The people that modded the parent post Insightful are idiots. BLAM THIS BLATANTLY FALSE TRASH, PLEASE!

Thus far, the most startling difference has been that people here appear to try to sell open source software, rather than making it available for free.

Are you really that surprised?

https://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/
https://shop.mysql.com/
http://www.novell.com/linux/
http://www.cafepress.com/officialgentoo/1227454

etc...

And if you prefer the free approach:

ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/

That being said I did break replication by dropping a test database which did not exist on the slaves (why should they care if they cannot execute drop database on a database which does not exist.

Not going to argue too much with you, but this is a feature-not-a-bug. DROP TABLE returns an error if one or more of the tables don't exist. Errors cause replication halting. That's why DROP TABLE IF EXISTS is there.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/drop-table. html

Your data is pretty worthless if you can't be bothered with ACID complience to make sure it is consistant.

Doesn't Slashdot use MySQL still??
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/success-stori es/slashdot.html/ and http://slashdot.org/faq/tech.shtml#te050/ look for (MYSQL).

If it is good enough for SlashDot then it is good enough for me.

You wouldn't happen to be using multiple masters in your replication are you? If you are the problem could be that data was being inserted into two masters at the same time so the insert gets replicated before the autoincrement. This is easily avoided by setting an offset for autoincrement. link here.

I'm really surprised there wasn't an error somewhere. Did you check the replication logs? You wouldn't get one on the insert, because the inserts worked, its just the replication screwed things up.

which is neither yours nor very good SQL

Open-source GPL + optional commercial licensing not good enough for you?

real database

But maybe we don't need a "real" database. Maybe we need an easy-to-use replacement for flat files with some database features. Not everyone is running a bank, or handling a billion emails a day, or tracking inventory for Wal-Mart. Lots of users just want something that can handle their small little application.

IMHO, one of the reasons why the web is broken is that it is so easy to create content that no one takes the time to learn the basic computer science involved

Spoken like a true CS major. CS is a valuable, valuable field - I have nothing but the highest respect for it (which is why I'm getting an ECE degree + CS minor). But the web is not 'broken' - it is the single most valuable informational resource that we have ever created. And the web is useful precisely because you don't have to understand CS to create content. Do you think that there would be 1/1000th of the content on the web if you had to understand CS to contribute to it? No. What we would end up with would be a web that consists entirely of pages created by pencilnecks like yourself and by corporations with big budgets. There would be no Slashdot. There would be no Wikipedia.

In MySQL, the second query would have to wait.
Perhaps you should stop using MyISAM and start using InnoDB:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-cons istent-read.html

"Apparently the much belowed MySQL doesn't know it either, since in contrast to most standard SQL relational databases like Postgresql, it silently trims certain input/fields instead of reporting an error."

Might you be looking for: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-sql- mode.html ?