This is the 176th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.
There were heaps of mostly technical posts this week. I think bloggers are tired of kicking around the ins-and-outs of Sun and Oracle, and wanted to talk about what really matters. So let’s start with . . .
Oracle
Harald van Breederode shows how to setup a private DNS for your virtual cluster.
Pythian’s Alex Fatkulin discusses Oracle GoldenGate Extract Internals.
From Charles Hooper comes this investigation: Simple Query Generates Complex Execution Plan, the Mysterious 4063.88 Second Single Block Read Wait.
Coskan Gundogar was also in a deductive frame of mind. Here is his Working with statspack-part-1a-Diagnosis, featuring both a challenge and purty pictures (pastels!).
Here is Jonah H. Harris with an introduction to the NEXTGRES Gateway, a MySQL Emulator for Oracle. Jonah writes: “So, a few people have asked me what NEXTGRES Gateway is. My short answer, the ultimate database compatibility server. . . . I’ve been working on this personal project non-stop for the last 8 months and am really excited about it.”
John Hallas lays out the use of functions in a .profile file.
MySQL
In a different part of config file land, Ronald Bradford cautions us, be sure to know your my.cnf [sections]. “The MySQL configuration file,” he writes, “e.g. /etc/my.cnf has a number of different section headings including [mysql], [mysqld], [mysqld_safe]. It is important that you ensure you put the right variables into the right section.”
Sheeri K. Cabral responds with Know your my.cnf groups, part II.
Baron Schwartz inspires a lot of conversation with his post, My wishlist for SQL: the UNTIL clause. Baron says, “I’d like an UNTIL clause, please. I’d use it sort of like LIMIT in MySQL and PostgreSQL, except that it would define when to stop returning looking for rows, instead of defining how many to return.”
Roland Bouman has gone about adding stuff to MySQL on his own, as he demonstrates in Easter Eggs for MySQL and Kettle with a MySQL stored function to calculate easter day.
Speaking of things hidden, here is a note from Andrew Morgan pointing out the location of MySQL documentation and binaries.
Marc Alff is looking forward, and offers a performance schema overview, ” . . . an introduction to the new ‘performance schema’ feature, which will be part of the upcoming MySQL 5.5 release.”
We must have at least one post on the whole Sun/Oracle thing, and I found a good one–Oracle, MySQL, the EU and Wayne Gretzky, by Mike Hogan. The keynote: “‘A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be’ — Wayne Gretzky”
SQL Server
To quote Oracle blogger Kevin Closson, “little things doth crabby make.” Or as Aaron Bertrand would put it, Sometimes it’s the small things: match column names in subqueries. Aaron writes, “The behavior of column matching in subqueries is a little peculiar, to say the least. If you’ve been bitten by this behavior once, you’re unlikely to have been bitten a second time, but for some of us it just takes a while to sink in.”
Jonathan Kehayias has another puzzler: is NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM a sysadmin in your SQL Server and why? “I was prompted to ask this question while configuring a server early today and after installing SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2, I noticed that despite being installed from default using a Domain Account for the Services, the Local System account was still a sysadmin in SQL Server.”
Another little thing, courtesy Roman Rehak: “One of the things that I found dissapointing in Management Studio 2008 is that in the event of a crash (and in addition to crashing in the first place), is that on a restart it doesn’t show me a dialog with a list of auto-saved files, like my SSMS 2005 did.” But, he says, your work may not be lost.
Michelle Ufford has updates on her index defrag script – beta testers are needed.
Simon Sabin shares SQLBits videos for SQLBits V.
PostgreSQL
Bruce Momjian relays an appeal for a new project slogan for Postgres, and shares the leading candidates thus far. “PostgreSQL: The ‘Open’ Open Source Database” Who can they be comparing themselves to? “PostgreSQL: Unpronounceably awesome!” That’s the one!
Bruce also enumerates what he sees as threats to Postgres.
Hubert Lubacziewski notes that he is now waiting for … 9.0: “I’ve written 29 posts about new features in 8.5. And now core team decided to name it 9.0. Great.”
And so the Database Explorer appears with a brief update on 9.0 Replication Features.
Last, Kendal Van Dyke exhorts you to use your tech skills to help Haiti. He writes, “So what do you do if you want to help? . . . I came across an article on cnn.com which highlighted “Crisis Camp Haiti”, a group of volunteers working to build digital maps, mobile apps, and searching through data to help relief groups in Haiti coordinates their efforts. They’ve got a website up at https://crisiscommons.org/ and you can follow them on Twitter (@crisiscamp).”
That’s all for now. See you for LB #177!
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