O'Reilly News & Commentary

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

By Allen Noren
November 4, 2009

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

Four short links: 26 October 2009 - Data Exploration, Evidence-Based Coding, API to the English Language, Dual Licensing

By Nat Torkington
October 26, 2009

Toiling in the Data Mines -- Tom Armitage describes the process that Berg calls "material exploration". "Programmers very rarely talk about what their work feels like to do, and that's a shame. Material explorations are something I've really only done since I've joined BERG, and both times have felt very similar - in that they were very, very different to writing production code for an understood product. They demand code to be used as a sculpting tool, rather than as an engineering material..." This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Four short links: 5 October 2009 - Bozo Cloud Talk, Annotation Fail(ish), Python MySQL Slash, and Infinite Books

By Nat Torkington
October 5, 2009

Brown Cloud Marketing -- An advertorial "interviewing" the general manager of a company offering "DNS in the cloud". This might be a worthwhile service, but the way he markets it (by saying open source is "freeware" and the market leader is "legacy") reveals a rich vein of bozo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Upcoming Webcasts - Hands-on: Step-by-step MySQL Clustering Setup - A Free Live Webcast - August 4 at 10am PT / 1pm ET

By O'Reilly Media
August 3, 2009

MySQL's Clustering solution provides some pretty sophisticated functionality. In this webcast we'll take you through getting it up and running on your laptop or single node server, building a sandbox where you can play with the dials and levers and get familiar with all the moving parts. Attendance is limited, so register now! More Upcoming Webcasts - Meet Experts Online: 5 Ways to Enhance SharePoint Site Usability Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

OSCON: The saga of MySQL

By Robert Kaye
July 24, 2009

At OSCON in 2006, I followed sessions that discussed how open source companies would fare when big corporations come in. Back then there were only a handful of examples of big companies purchasing small open source companies. Three years later, we've witnessed MySQL AB get swallowed by Sun, only to have Sun be swallowed by Oracle. Now there are...

MySQL faster, better, and still unified: notes about Sun, Monty Widenius, Percona, and Drizzle

By Andy Oram
May 22, 2009

It might have seemed last week, with the announcement of the Open Database Alliance, that MySQL is forking. The ODA promises a "central clearinghouse for MySQL development" and claims to improve on areas where criticism has historically been aimed at MySQL AB/Sun: bug-fixing, performance, and community responsiveness. But what's going on behind the scenes is much more subtle and promises a much better outcome for MySQL.

MySQL 2009 conference wrap-up: news flash about Flash and other notes from the experts

By Andy Oram
April 24, 2009

MySQL conference wrap-up: Flash, cloud computing, managing large installations, the value of community, and how to fumble your way to winning the presidency.

MySQL conference begins: the resurgence of InnoDB and other current events

By Andy Oram
April 23, 2009

I sense a bigger enterprise theme at the MySQL conference this year. The pride of putting up a PHP- or Rails-backed web site lies in the past; now people are concerned with scaling into the clouds (figuratively and literally) and ensuring absolute reliability.

Brian Aker: What Would an IBM Buyout of Sun Mean for MySQL?

By James Turner
March 26, 2009

MySQL has had a long and sometimes strange journey from an independent database project to being commercialized; then brought to Sun and now possibly moving to a new home again. Brian Aker is the director of technology for MySQL with Sun Microsystems and probably is familiar as anyone with the life history and current status of the popular open-source database. He recently discussed the current status of MySQL with us, and how it might fare if IBM were to acquire Sun.

Read an Excerpt from High Performance MySQL: Winner of a Productivity Award at the 19th Annual Jolt Awards

By Kathryn Barrett
March 17, 2009

We're delighted to announce that High Performance MySQL, Second Edition, was awarded a Jolt Productivity Award in the category of Technical Books. The Jolts are the Oscars of the software development industry, showcasing the books, tools, and other products that have "jolted" the industry. Congratulations to the authors of this title. To celebrate, we've posted an excerpt from the book.

Microsoft's Cloud Tax

By George Reese
December 25, 2008

The importance of the differences among web application platforms like .NET, JSP, PHP, etc. drops dramatically under the cloud computing paradigm. Which architecture you choose really comes down to one question: what kind of programming and support resources do you have? If the answer is "Microsoft technologies", however, you should be aware of the Microsoft cloud tax.

Installing Instant Rails on Windows

By Simon St. Laurent
December 23, 2008

Instant Rails is getting old, but it's still a quick way to install Rails and start coding. This screencast shows how to download and install Instant Rails, and shows off how it works with a simple example from Chapter 2 of Learning Rails.

New MySQL Query Analyzer for enterprise customers

By Andy Oram
November 19, 2008

MySQL AB (now Sun's Database group) established a multi-pronged business model long ago: support contracts, dual licensing, and proprietary add-ons all play a role in making them one of the biggest success stories in the area of open source business. Today their MySQL Query Analyzer adds another brick to that edifice. The analyzer can do simple things such as tell you how long a recent query took and how the optimizer handled it (the results of EXPLAIN statements). But it can also give historical information such as how the current runs of a query compare to earlier runs.

Brian Aker's Vision for a Livable Design, Looking at MySQL as OSCON Approaches

By James Turner
August 14, 2008

With me today is Brian Aker, Director of Technology for MySQL. Brian is the author of Running Weblogs w/ Slash. He's also leading a tutorial at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, July 21-25, in Portland, Oregon...

MySQL forks: could Drizzle be the next of the new generation of relational database?

By Andy Oram
July 23, 2008

I had a brief talk with leading MySQL develop Brian Aker today about one of the biggest turns in MySQL history: this morning's Drizzle announcement. Brian presented Drizzle as an irrevocable fork of MySQL. To me it represents four deliberate steps in one. Drizzle also calls to mind a lot of the complaints just published by Margo Seltzer in the Communications of the ACM.

Optimization, Backups, Replication, and more

By O'Reilly Media
June 25, 2008

High Performance MySQL, Second Edition is the definitive guide to building fast, reliable systems with MySQL. Written by noted experts with years of real-world experience building very large systems, this book covers every aspect of MySQL performance in detail, and focuses on robustness, security, and data integrity. Learn advanced techniques in depth so you can bring out MySQL's full power. The second edition is completely revised and greatly expanded, with deeper coverage in all areas. Learn more.

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