Hello and welcome to the 146th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. I have to make this a quick one, but I hope (as always) that the links give you the highlights of this week’s blogs.
Oracle
Let’s start with Jonathan Lewis’s report from IOUG Day 4: ” Not so much a little gem today as a little surprise and a few consequential thoughts. In a presentation on optimising star transformations the presenter pointed out that bitmap indexes are only available in Oracle Enterprise Edition.”
Here’s Doug Burns with the first of a series on Adaptive Thresholds in 10g (Metric Baselines). Doug writes, “[I really didn’t want to get into another multi-part blog post, but this has grown longer than I hoped, so I’ll split it up …]”
Doug, you could have started with the second part, as Kevin Closson did: You Buy a NUMA System, Oracle Says Disable NUMA! What Gives? Part II Haven’t read Part I? Don’t worry. “Yes, in this mini-series of posts Part II will precede Part I. I’ll explain…eventually,” writes Kevin.
Richard Foote still has left Doug and Kevin in the dust, having got to Part V of his Indexes And Small Tables series.
Kerry Osborne was playing with numbers too, in his own way—pointing out some extremes in buffer cache sizes, and asking for his readers’ experiences.
John Hallas ponders autostart using the ‘W’ flag in oratab: “In 10.2.0.2 an option arrived to manage the automatic startup and shutdown of the databases. . . . However on playing around with these settings . . . I could not see any way that the functionality was working.” Your feedback is requested.
MySQL
George J. Trujillo Jr. wonders about Oracle SQL Developer with MySQL: “I am always asked, what GUI to you recommend with MySQL? Two of the most popular are SQLYog and Navicat for MySQL customers. . . . I think it is time to see how well SQL Developer works with MySQL.” Roland Bouman appears with a link to his own review of SQL Developer in this light.
On the Colin Charles Agenda appears an interview with Rohit Nadhani, founder of Webyog. And there’s Sheeri Cabral with a link to her review of Webyog.
Speaking of Sheeri . . . What kind of colleague would I be if I failed to mention that her just-published book the MySQL Bible is here. Congratulations, Sheeri!
On code.openark.org, Shlomi Noach writes, “It seems like MySQL is unable to utilize a compound index when evaluating a plan for a query with a range condition. I’m looking for an explanation. I’ll appreciate any insight on this.” His readers respond and discuss the matter.
Matt Yonkovit, one of MySQL blogging’s two Big DBA Heads, begins a series of Sun/Intel X-25e 4 Disk Raid 10 tests. Matt begins thus: “Those who follow my blog know I love IO and I love to benchmark anything that can help overcome IO issues. One of the most exciting things out their at this point are the Intel x-25e drives. These bad boys are not only fast but relatively inexpensive. How fast are they? Let’s just do a quick bit of review here and peak at the single drive #’s from sysbench.”
Monty says that the Open Database Alliance is founded. “Monty Program Ab and Percona today launched the Open Database Alliance. . . . This may be one of the most important steps in the history of MySQL and MariaDB. . . . Here follows my initial vision of the Open Database Alliance.”
Josh Berkus of Database Soup took notice of Monty’s declaration, and approves.
Giuseppe Maxia, the Data Charmer, announces a MySQL Event in Montreal, this Monday, the 18th of May.
PostgreSQL
From even closer to home comes a call for PgCon 2009 lightning talks, courtesy Selena Deckelmann. (PGCon itself begins here in Ottawa, Canada on May 19.)
Let’s go back to Josh Berkus for a moment. He has published a guide to using 8.4 Parallel Restore with your 8.3 or 8.2 database.
SQL Server
Martin Bell, UK SQL Server MVP started blogging this week, with (you guessed it) the first of a series on table-valued parameters in SQL Server 2008.
Denis Gobo has a couple of reasons he won’t be moving my databases to the cloud anytime soon. Six reasons for SQL Server Data Services, to be precise.
Why use stored procedures, asks Paul Nielsen. In his view as a data architect, extensibility is the key: “The data architect’s answer to why use stored procedures is that T-SQL is only language that you KNOW will last as long as the data.”
On the Journey to SQL Authority with Pinal Dave, we stop to find the last date time updated for any table.
The Scary DBA offers some PowerShell basics. Others are not so keen—Bill G.’s thoughts on SQL Server include, Why am I being forced to learn PowerShell?
There are more blogs, but no more time, so that’s all for now. Please mention your favourite blogs from this week in the comments, and get in touch with me to host an edition of Log Buffer on your own weblog.
Till next time!
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