Looking for a Few Good Examples

In the #maria IRC channel the other day I fielded a question someone had about a DATETIME column where they wanted to SELECT by the year. The answer (which is probably obvious to many of you) is to use the YEAR() function like so:
select * from t1 where YEAR(d) = 2011;
(The above assumes the table is named “t1” and the DATETIME column is named “d”.)

In my reply I provided a link to the Date and Time Functions section of the AskMonty Knowledgebase, but when I looked at the entry for the YEAR() function, I noticed that the example given (which originated from the file scripts/fill_help_tables.sql which is found in the MySQL and MariaDB source) was not very helpful:
MariaDB [(none)]> …

Newsletters from the MariaDB dev meeting in Lisbon

Every morning before any of the meetings get started I print out a small one page newsletter which contains (among other things) the program for the day. Rather than keep them private, Colin suggested I post them here. I call the newsletter the “MariaDB Programador de Journal” which (I think) translates to “MariaDB Programmer’s Journal” in Portuguese.

[Updated, 13 Mar 2011, to add the newsletter for that day.]

At the meeting we’ve also been taking notes and posting them online for what improvements we want to make this year in MariaDB to make it even better. …

The AskMonty Knowledge Base – Open for editing

Almost a year ago we launched the AskMonty Knowledgebase, a home for information on MariaDB and MySQL. When we launched, only employees had access to write articles, though anyone could ask a question. This was done for technical reasons. The good news is that that has changed, with the latest version we just pushed live, anyone with an account (or an open ID) can create and edit articles.

There is only so much content we can write so we want your contributions, from completely new articles to editing and improving what we already have. If you have questions on how to get started, you can join the Maria Docs group on launchpad and ask on the mailing list. …

Quickly and efficiently migrating hundreds of servers from MySQL to MariaDB

Via SpamExperts:

SpamExperts has their own anti-spam filtering cloud which is provided as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. In addition they have an e-mail security product which they install, update and monitor on-site. Most of SpamExperts’ anti-spam technology has been developed in-house and makes extensive use of the MySQL database. All clients contribute in real-time to their filtering effectiveness, so they have many different data flows that are handled by MySQL. Replication is used to synchronize the data between the systems in a cluster and to push data feeds in real-time. The SaaS cloud is replicated across four countries for redundancy, whereas client installations spread the data retrieval around the globe.

After SQL-99, What’s Next?

As Hakan mentioned previously, the full text of SQL-99 Complete, Really by Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer, is now in the AskMonty.org Knowledgebase. Importing the text and formatting it for the Knowledgebase was a major project and I’m glad that it’s done.

Having the full text of this book freely available is a great thing for anyone who uses SQL because the book is about the SQL-99 standard and not about any particular database implementation. They do talk about different implementations, but those sections are clearly marked as such, and serve as examples of  how some databases implement (or diverge from) the standard.

MariaDB and TokuDB

I was happy to see the announcement yesterday from Tokutek regarding their addition of MariaDB to their list of supported platforms for the TokuDB storage engine.

One particular item in the press release caught my eye: “Our customers are choosing MariaDB more and more frequently for their most demanding database applications.” We’ve added many new features over the past year in our various 5.1 and 5.2 releases, but beyond the new goodies we’ve focused a lot of energy on removing bugs and improving performance. We’ve known for a while that MariaDB is the best version of MySQL out there; …

MariaDB 5.1.53 And 5.2.4 Released

This past Monday updates in both the 5.1 and 5.2 series of MariaDB were released. It’s a pretty big deal, as some issues have been solved that affect a large number of users. You should read the release notes for MariaDB 5.1.53 and for MariaDB 5.2.4 as well as the release announcement. The annoucement contains download links from worldwide mirrors.

Speaking of downloads, the 5.2 series has seen a remarkable increase in download totals. Several orders of magnitude, in fact. That’s usually a pretty good sign, so I’ll take it as such. …

Şerefe! – The MariaDB Knowledge Base in Istanbul

Monty Program along with various guests and our friends at the recently founded SkySQL recently wrapped up a meeting in Istanbul Turkey. Sadly it rained most days but we had a good time and got a lot done.

Besides learning how to say “Şerefe” which is “Cheers” in Turkish, we discussed the future of MariaDB, our companies goals, the MariaDB knowledge base and many other topics. Since I am the web guy, I lead the presentation / talk on the KB and thought I would share some highpoints of it with you.

If you don’t know, the KB is located at http://kb.askmonty.org. …