Log Buffer #337, A Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs

The journey is old, but the milestones are new. It’s the same old quest for excellence. Innovative questions are being asked and answered in the blogs across the Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL branches of technologies. This Log Buffer Edition relishes just that. Let’s start this Log Buffer with the exquisite blog post by Dana Pylayeva.
Oracle:

EMlight might not be as important now with Oracle 12c coming out and with Oracle’s EM Express, but EMlight is still pretty cool.

The maximum size for VARCHAR2, NVARCHAR and RAW columns has been extended to 32767 bytes with the Oracle 12c database.

Here’s a treat for the hard-core Oracle performance geeks out there. Tanel Poder is releasing a new tool.

Jonathan Lewis has a fairly strong preference for choosing simple solutions over complex solutions, and using Oracle-supplied packaged over writing custom code.

Connor is talking about 12c FETCH FIRST.

SQL Server:

Valentino Vranken is telling a story about SQL Server-related contraptions.

Thomas LaRock is taking part in a webinar about Expert Database Design Tips for SQL Server and Azure.

The Certified Master and Architect community was collectively notified Friday, August 30, at 10PM PST that the Certified Master (MCM/MCSM) and Certified Architect (MCA) programs are dead.

The second incarnation of 2013 “SQL Relay” is bigger and better than ever, Richard Douglas has more.

Michael Swart is sharing three more tricky Tempdb lessons.

MySQL:

Jervin says that we all know that when troubleshooting MySQL crashes or any other processes in that regard, we simply enable core files to be dumped when the appropriate signal it triggered.

Want to prove your expertise with MySQL? Why not get certified.

There are multiple ways to backup a MySQL database. Some are more painful than others.

When Peter Gulutzan worked for MySQL he saw frequent complaints that the UNIQUE constraint didn’t stop users from inserting NULLs, multiple times.

Andrew Morgan was rooting through past blog entries and stumbled across a draft post on setting up multi-master (update anywhere) asynchronous replication for MySQL Cluster.