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The best collection of links to start is not this page but  Pal's Linux RDBMS Library.

My page is pretty rudimentary and currently not maintained well as my current work and research interests are more in OS security area.  But still it was useful for my students before and might be useful for somebody now. So I decided to keep it on the WEB.  There are two major open source relational databases:  PostgreSQL and MySQL.

PostgreSQL History

PostgreSQL, originally called Postgres, was created at UCB by a computer science professor named Michael Stonebraker, who went on to become the CTO of Informix Corporation. Stonebraker started Postgres in 1986 as a followup project to its predecessor, Ingres, now owned by Computer Associates. The name Postgres thus plays off of its predecessor (as in "after Ingres"). Ingres, developed from 1977 to 1985, had been an exercise in creating a database system according to classic RDBMS theory. Postgres, developed between 1986-1994, was a project meant to break new ground in database concepts such as exploration of "object relational" technologies.

Stonebraker and his graduate students actively developed Postgres for eight years. During that time, Postgres introduced rules, procedures, time travel, extensible types with indices and object-relational concepts. Postgres was later commercialized to become Illustra which was later bought by Informix and integrated into its Universal Server. Informix was purchased by IBM in 2001 for one billion dollars.

In 1995, two Ph.D. students from Stonebraker's lab, Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen, replaced Postgres' POSTQUEL query language with an extended subset of SQL. They renamed the system to Postgres95.

In 1996, Postgres95 departed from academia and started a new life in the open source world when a group of dedicated developers outside of Berkeley saw the promise of the system, and devoted themselves to its continued development. Contributing enormous amounts of time, skill, labor, and technical expertise, this global development group radically transformed Postgres. Over the next eight years, they brought consistency and uniformity to the code base, created detailed regression tests for quality assurance, set up mailing lists for bug reports, fixed innumerable bugs, added incredible new features, and rounded out the system by filling various gaps such as documentation for developers and users.

The fruition of their labor was a new database that garnered a reputation for rock solid stability. With the start of its new life in the open source world, with many new features and enhancements, the database system took its current name: PostgreSQL. ("Postgres" is still used as an easy-to-pronounce nick-name.)

PostgreSQL began at version 6.0, giving credit to its many years of prior development. With the help of hundreds of developers from around the world, the system was changed and improved in almost every area. Over the next four years (versions 6.0 - 7.0), major improvements and new features were made such as:

The four years following (versions 7.0 to 7.4) brought the Write-Ahead Log (WAL), SQL schemas, prepared queries, outer joins, complex queries, SQL92 join syntax, TOAST, IPv6 support, SQL-standard information schema, full-text indexing, auto-vacuum, Perl/Python/TCL procedural languages, improved SSL support, an optimizer overhaul, database statistics information, added security, table functions, and logging enhancements and significant speed improvements, among other things. A small measure of PostgreSQL's intensive development is reflected in its release notes.

Today, PostgreSQL's user base is larger than ever and includes a sizeable group of large corporations who use it in demanding environments. Some of these companies such as Afilias and Fujitsu have made significant contributions to PostgreSQL's development. And, true to its roots, it continues to improve in both sophistication and performance, now more than ever. Version 8.0 is PostgreSQL's long awaited debut into the enterprise database market, bringing features such as tablespaces, Java stored procedures, point in time recovery, and nested transactions (savepoints). With it came a long awaited feature --- a native Windows port.

Many organizations, government agencies and companies use PostgreSQL. You will find installations in ADP, CISCO, NTT Data, NOAA, Research In Motion, The US Forestry Service and The American Chemical Society. Today, it's rare to find a large corporation or government agency which isn't using PostgreSQL in at least one department.

If there were ever a time for you to seriously consider using PostgreSQL to power your application or business, it would be now.

The history of MySQL AB Dries Buytaert
MySQL, the open source database product that puts the "M" in LAMP, was created by MySQL AB, a company founded in 1998 in Sweden. Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB on 26 February 2008 for approximately $1 billion. It became standard database in LAMP stack and as such aqured tremendous popularity.

Taking into account a poor shape of most imbed database languages,  Linux+Apache+MySQL+ PHP combination (or Linux+Apache+PostgreSQL+PHP)  at least for WEB applications looks comparative to proprietary offerings. Using Python is the other possibility. I feel that adding procedural components to SQL is a questionable idea and the only reasonable way to extend SQL go is to use a decent scripting language.  Java is another possibility but as it strong typing, it's  wrong possibility ;-). Although Java acquired industry standard of new Cobol (Cobol 2000 ;-), I would like to warn you that it neither provide high productivity typical for scripting language, no high performance typical for compiled languages (it's getting better). A lot of organizations spend millions of dollars on Java interfaces with databases with marginal or oven negative results as for development or support costs. They would get the same or better result much quicker and for a fraction of money with any decent scripting language.

If you need really large database I would see first if the database design is implementable under PostgreSQL. for historical reason I prefer Perl, but this is for only historical reasons. For smaller databases MySQL is OK or in case you work with WEB might even be a better bet (more literature, more open applications to study, more people to consult about problems, etc). In case those two are for some reason unsuitable Oracle on Solaris is a safe (but extremely expensive) solution. Oracle on Linux is a questionable bet -- it you are paying those huge money for the database you need a decent hardware and the best OS the money can buy -- that means UltraSparc III and Solaris 9. As an embeddable database Berkeley DB is an excellent solution.

I generally prefer PostgreSQL which is free in true sense of the word (it is licensed under BSD license), but of course you will be better off  buying support if you are doing something serious unless you want to became a PostreSQL developer.  But MySQL is a slightly stronger bet if we are talking about  <Web-server>>-<scriptinglanguage>-<database>  troika. Actually apache-PHP-MySQL is a very strong, and now pretty polished, development platform.

Note:  Please remember that for large projects changing databases is a very painful experience that should be avoided as much as possible.

Again, this page should be viewed only after Pal's Linux RDBMS Library:

This site is a compilation of the best free online readings about relational databases on Linux. If you're a Linux RDBMS/database administrator, a database designer/developer, or simply a Linux user with database ambitions, you'll find links to valuable resources here: articles, papers, and books on various aspects of relational database management. Needless to say, much of this material is more or less applicable to other (UNIX) environments, too.

Good luck !

Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov


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[Jul 02, 2021] Delta Variant's Spread Prompts Reconsideration of Mask Guidance - The New York Times

Jul 02, 2021 | www.nytimes.com

But that was before the spread of the Delta variant . Worried by a global surge in cases, the World Health Organization last week reiterated its longstanding recommendation that everyone -- including the inoculated -- wear masks to stem the spread of the virus.

On Monday, health officials in Los Angeles County followed suit , recommending that "everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure."

Barbara Ferrer, the county's public health director, said the new recommendation was needed because of upticks in infections, a rise in cases due to the worrisome Delta variant , and persistently high numbers of unvaccinated residents, particularly children, Black and Latino residents and essential workers.

Roughly half of Los Angeles County residents are fully vaccinated , and about 60 percent have had at least one dose. While the number of positive tests is still below 1 percent in the county, the rate has been inching up, Dr. Ferrer added, and there has been a rise in the number of reinfections among residents who were infected before and did not get vaccinated.

To the extent that Los Angeles County has managed to control the pandemic, it has been because of a multilayered strategy that combined vaccinations with health restrictions aimed at curbing new infections, Dr. Ferrer said. Natural immunity among those already infected has also kept transmission low, she noted, but it is not clear how long natural immunity will last.

[Jul 02, 2021] Some Vaccinated People Are Dying of Covid-19. That suggests that Delta is displaying a worrying ability to evade the vaccine and cause severe illness

Jul 02, 2021 | www.msn.com

As the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges through the U.K., almost half of the country's recent Covid-19 deaths are of people who have been vaccinated.

.... ... ...

The U.K. is a testing ground for how vaccines are coping. Delta is racing through the country -- with 146,000 identified cases in the past week, 72% up on the week before. The country is also a world leader in identifying through testing and genetic sequencing which versions of the virus are prevalent: By mid-June, 97% of cases were Delta infections. And Delta is spreading among a population that is among the most highly vaccinated in the world: 85% of adults have had at least one vaccine shot and 63% have had two.

Data from Public Health England show that there were 117 deaths among 92,000 Delta cases logged through June 21. Fifty of those -- 46% -- had received two shots of vaccine.

First, vaccines aren't 100% effective. Not everyone who is inoculated will respond in the same way. Those who are elderly or whose immune systems are faulty, damaged or stressed by some other illness are less likely to mount a robust response than someone younger and fitter. Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective but some people will still be vulnerable to the virus even after receiving their shots.

Second, the risk of dying from Covid-19 increases steeply with age. If a vaccine reduces an 80-year-old's risk of death from Covid-19 by 95%, for instance, that 80-year-old's risk of death might still be greater than the risk faced by an unvaccinated 20-year-old. Some chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and lung disease are also associated with a higher risk of severe illness and death.

Third, as more of the population gets vaccinated, there are fewer unvaccinated people for the virus to infect. If the pool of vaccinated people is larger than the pool of unvaccinated people, then it is possible and even likely that breakthrough infections resulting in death in the older, vaccinated group would match or exceed deaths in the younger, unvaccinated group. Consider an imaginary country with 100% of people vaccinated, where the virus can still somehow spread. All Covid-19 deaths would be in vaccinated individuals.

Of those 50 deaths in fully vaccinated people in England, all were in people aged 50 years and over, the data show. There have been no deaths recorded in double-vaccinated under 50s.

The data show that, overall, the fatality rate for confirmed cases of Covid-19 has been lower than it was with the Alpha variant, which was first spotted in the U.K.

... Public Health England, using a variety of statistical analyses, has estimated that vaccination reduces the risk of hospitalization with the Delta variant in people who have received two doses by between 91% and 98%, with a central estimate of 96%.

Though vaccines offer substantial protection against severe illness and death, there is growing evidence from lab studies and real-world data that Delta does have some ability to bypass vaccines to cause milder infection.

Public Health England says that its analysis of Delta cases in England implies protection against symptomatic Covid-19 caused by Delta of around 79%. That compares with an 89% reduction in the risk of symptomatic Covid-19 with Alpha.

In Israel, a senior health official said in late June that in a recent outbreak of 200 or so Delta cases, about half were in children 15 years old and younger and the other half were in those aged 16 and above, of whom more than 80% are fully vaccinated.

British data shows Delta is even more adept at evading our immune response after just one dose of vaccine, highlighting the importance, public health officials say, of getting two shots. A single dose reduces the risk of symptomatic Covid-19 with Alpha by 49%, according Public Health England, but only by 35% with Delta.

[Jul 02, 2021] Number Of US Truck Drivers Sidelined Due To Substance Abuse Violations Has Surpassed 60,000 by John Gallagher

Jul 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Originally from: FreightWaves

Banned drivers matches shortfall in CDL holders needed to meet freight demand. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

The number of U.S. truck drivers sidelined due to substance abuse violations has surpassed 60,000 and continues to climb by roughly 2,000-3,000 per month, according to federal data. The latest monthly report by the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration since January 2020, revealed that 60,299 CDL holders have a drug or alcohol violation recorded in the clearinghouse as of June 1, up from 57,510 as of May 1 and up from 18,860 recorded in the clearinghouse as of May 1, 2020.

Drivers with at least one substance abuse violation are barred from operating a commercial truck until they complete a return-to-duty process, which includes providing a negative follow-up test result. The percentage of drivers who are completing the RTD process has steadily increased over the past year, however, from 5.2% as of May 1, 2020, to 22.1% as of May 1, 2021.

Marijuana consistently tops the list of substances identified in positive drug tests, far outpacing cocaine and methamphetamine, the second- and third-highest drug violations, respectively, among CDL holders.

The number of violations now recorded in the clearinghouse stands out for another reason: It's coincidentally just a few hundred shy of an estimated number of drivers needed to fill a shortfall of commercial drivers to keep pace with freight demand.

"According to a recent estimate, the trucking industry needs an additional 60,800 truck drivers immediately -- a deficit that is expected to grow to more than 160,000 by 2028," testified American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear at a Capitol Hill hearing on freight mobility in May.

"In fact, when anticipated driver retirement numbers are combined with the expected growth in capacity, the trucking industry will need to hire roughly 1.1 million new drivers over the next decade, or an average of nearly 110,000 per year."

Scopelitis Consulting Co-Director Sean Garney pointed out that the growing number of prohibited drivers is not a bad thing from a safety standpoint.

"The database is doing what it's supposed to do, which is identify those who should not be driving," Garney told FreightWaves. "Losing drivers due to positive drug tests may not necessarily be a good thing for truck capacity, but I think what many others in this industry also care about is safety."

[Jul 02, 2021] Number Of US Truck Drivers Sidelined Due To Substance Abuse Violations Has Surpassed 60,000

Jul 02, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Lone_Star 7 hours ago

I don't see what's wrong with truck drivers being all hopped up on amphetamines, they were doing it to bomber pilots during WWII and beyond.

rockstone 7 hours ago

The whole idea is to keep a shipping network from resembling a bombing run.

fxrxexexdxoxmx3 PREMIUM 7 hours ago

Comment of the day

ParkAveSlasher 7 hours ago (Edited)

I would think a bombing run would be the most efficient thing a delivery and offload could resemble

[Jul 01, 2021] Mother weeps as she tells senator how Pfizer shot left her daughter wheelchair-bound - News - Lifesitenews

Jul 01, 2021 | www.lifesitenews.com

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin, June 30, 2021 ( LifeSiteNews ) � At an event hosted by a U.S. senator, a mother cried as she recounted how the Pfizer experimental coronavirus vaccine left her previously healthy, active 12-year-old daughter in a wheelchair.

On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) hosted a news conference to discuss adverse reactions related to COVID-19 vaccines. Stephanie de Garay tearfully explained that her 12-year-old daughter, Maddie, is now wheelchair-bound after volunteering to take the Pfizer vaccine as part of the vaccine trial.

Since receiving the injection, Maddie has been to the emergency room nine times and hospitalized three times for two months.

wcfm facebook.png

https://rumble.com/embed/vgncgn/?pub=7phg5

Maddie and her parents were excited for her to participate in the vaccine trial, as they identify as "pro-vaccine and pro-science." However, after receiving her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on January 20, Maddie immediately experienced pain in her arm where she had been vaccinated. Within the next 24 hours, she developed severe abdominal and chest pain.

Maddie told her mother that she felt "like my heart is being ripped out through my neck" as she experienced painful electrical shocks down her neck and spine, forcing her to hunch over to walk.

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At the instruction of the vaccine trial nurse administrator, Maddie's parents took her to the ER, where her labs were taken and she was tested for appendicitis, given an IV with medicine, and then sent home. She was diagnosed with "adverse effect of vaccine initial encounter."

Over the next 2 1/2 months, Maddie's mother said her abdominal, muscle, and nerve pain became unbearable. Maddie suffered from gastroparesis, nausea and vomiting, erratic blood pressure, memory loss, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, fainting, seizures, verbal and motor tics, menstrual cycle issues, lost feeling from the waist down, lost bowel and bladder control, and she had a nasogastric tube placed because she lost the ability to eat.

"Why is she not back to normal? She was totally fine before this," said Stephanie de Garay, Maddie's mother. Maddie had volunteered for the Pfizer vaccine trial "to help everyone else and they're not helping here. Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine, she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends and had a life."

wcea facebook

Some doctors attempted to attribute her neurological condition to anxiety and tried to send Maddie to a mental hospital. This caused her parents to seek aid from other sources. They met others suffering from similar adverse vaccine reactions who connected them with competent medical professionals.

"All we want is for Maddie to be seen, heard, and believed because she has not been. And we want her to get the care that she desperately needs, so she can go back to normal," said de Garay.

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.

[Jul 01, 2021] Why chidren needs to be vaccinated? Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine, she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends and had a life

Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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NAV 3 hours ago

And here is one of Fauci's vaccinated - and no one cares except to suggest that this young girl be put in a facility for mental patients...

Mother weeps as she tells senator how Pfizer shot left her daughter wheelchair-bound

'Before Maddie got her final dose of the vaccine, she was healthy, got straight As, had lots of friends and had a life.'

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mother-weeps-as-she-tells-senator-how-pfizer-shot-left-her-daughter-wheelchair-bound

Realism 2 hours ago

"Maddie and her parents were excited for her to participate in the vaccine trial, as they identify as "pro-vaccine and pro-science."

If this is true, who in the world would be excited to let their children participate in a medical experiment, they are the problem and now her child is paying the price

Not Your Father's ZH 2 hours ago

Mom-of-3 'Excited About Getting Vaccine' Dies From Blood Clot in Brain Following Astrazeneca Jab

She needed some excitement in her life. Now she doesn't.

Brushy 57 minutes ago

"How can Fauci claim you are at considerable risk if not vaccinated"

Its called lying.

Sparehead 1 hour ago

Considerable ~ 0.01% risk

[Jul 01, 2021] Percentage of false positives for Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles of amplification

Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Hipneck911 11 minutes ago

... NSW Health - Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles, double the ...

https://cairnsnews.org/2021/06/28/nsw-health-covid-pcr-tests-at-40-cycles-double-the-recommended-rate-yielding-80-per-cent-false-positives/

← Craig Kelly MP a true Australian hero warns there could have been 50,000 deaths from Covid vax. NSW Health - Covid PCR tests at 40 cycles , double the recommended rate yielding 80 per cent false positives* Jun 28. Posted by Editor, cairnsnews. Letter to the Editor.

Hipneck911 10 minutes ago

You gutless losers sure do like lying:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/experts-us-covid-19-positivity-rate-high-due-to-too-sensitive-tests/ar-BB18wE8B

Up to 90 percent of people tested for COVID-19 in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada in July carried barely any traces of the virus and it could be because today's tests are 'too sensitive', experts say.

... PCR tests analyze genetic matter from the virus in cycles and today's tests typically take 37 or 40 cycles, but experts say this is too high because it detects very small amounts of the virus that don't pose a risk.

Experts say a reasonable cutoff for the virus would be 30 or 35 cycles, according to Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside.

Mina said he would set the cutoff at 30.

New York's state lab Wadsworth analyzed cycle thresholds values in already processed COVID-19 PCR tests and found in July that 794 positive tests were based on a threshold of 40 cycles.

With a cutoff of 35, about half of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 70 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30.

In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been considered negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Mina said.

[Jul 01, 2021] Wonder what Mullis would have to say to Fauci on CNN these days?

Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall 1 hour ago (Edited)

Wonder what Mullis would have to say to Fauci on CNN these days?

"Guy's like Fauci, get up there and start talking, he doesn't know anything really about anything, and I'd say that to his face. Nothing. The man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if its got a virus in there, you'll know it. He doesn't understand electron microscopy, he doesn't understand medicine, he should not be in a position that he's in. " "Guys like Tony Fauci, do not mind going on the television, in front of the people that pay his salary, and lie directly into the camera." Kary Banks Mullis, 1993 Nobel Prize Winner, PCR Testing

https://www.bitchute.com/video/8KsH34IGgqBw/

[Jul 01, 2021] The Tyranny Of The Minority Is Just As Dangerous As The Tyranny Of The Majority

Jul 01, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

The question implies that state actors are specially qualified or motivated to subsidize minority opinion in order to rectify the unfair treatment of minorities -- that the state is the most qualified entity for intervening in opinion to favor minorities. But it is easily demonstrated that the market provides more incentives to advocate for the fair treatment of minorities than does the state. Markets encourage legal equality among buyers and sellers. The state, meanwhile, has no monopoly on equal treatment -- to say the least. Quite to the contrary, states have more incentives to discriminate against particular groups, as state prerogatives often depend on discrimination. Consider the treatment of the Japanese and Germans in America during World War II, or the treatment of Middle Easterners after 9/11. (Notice how discrimination against Middle Easterners morphed into the consternation about "Islamophobia" when the prerogatives of the state shifted from "the war on terror" under George W. Bush to the incorporation of Islamic immigrants into the electorate under Barack Obama.)

Thus, we should be quite skeptical when states impose the opinion of minorities on the majority through special programs in schools and elsewhere. Such programs likely involve "positive discrimination" against particular groups, consistent with state objectives.

In fact, discrimination is precisely what is involved in the teaching of critical race theory in schools, the military, the intelligence agencies, and in other government agencies today. Critical race theory is a minority opinion that even most blacks do not agree with. It is being foisted on the majority to establish discrimination against "whites," in order to destroy a political contingent deemed inimical to the Democratic Party–run state. It is a means for marginalizing oppositional elements and driving others into the voting ranks of the Democratic Party by means of ideology. The state imposition of minority opinion does not serve minorities.

[Jul 01, 2021] Putin Signs Law Forcing Foreign Social Media Giants To Open Russian Offices

Comments are mostly idiotic/uninformed/biased as typical for Slashdot on topics related to Russia
Jul 01, 2021 | tech.slashdot.org
Putin Signs Law Forcing Foreign Social Media Giants To Open Russian Offices (reuters.com) 47 Posted by msmash on Thursday July 01, 2021 @12:45PM from the how-about-that dept. President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that obliges foreign social media giants to open offices in Russia , a document published by the government on Thursday showed, the latest move by Moscow to exert greater control over Big Tech. From a report: The Russian authorities are keen to strengthen their control of the internet and to reduce their dependence on foreign companies and countries. In particular, they have objected in the past to political opponents of the Kremlin using foreign social media platforms to organise what they say are illegal protests and to publicise politically-tinged investigations into alleged corruption. Moscow has fined firms for failing to delete content it says is illegal, slowing down the speed of Twitter as punishment, and on Wednesday opened a new case against Alphabet subsidiary Google for breaching personal data legislation. by Vlijmen Fileer ( 120268 ) on Thursday July 01, 2021 @12:47PM ( #61540686 )

Other countries do the same. But somehow get less media attention for it

[Jun 30, 2021] Panic Porn Dressed Up As Science -- Exposing The Truth About The Delta Variant

Jun 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

E5 11 hours ago remove link

Uncomfortable Truths democrats don't have in their tool kit:

1) Flu is still down 98% and would normally account for a large percentage of the covid deaths.

2) 20% more babies were born in 1946 than in 1945. Deaths are increasing but not that much. This is accounts for the rest of the covid deaths.

3) Coronavirus' are among the highest mutating virus types and can not be eliminated by vaccine.

4) If the COVID symptoms arise from SARS-CoV-2 which came from bats and pangolins: then vaccinating Humans will have zero effect in eliminating the virus.

5) COVID is a set of symptoms not a virus. The virus is called SARS. This is a relationship like how AIDS is the symptom set that arises out of HIV. To talk about a vaccine for COVID as a medical professional is malpractice.

6) 50% of the people getting the "delta" variant are previously vaccinated. In clinical terms that means the vaccine experimental trial has failed.

If you still believe in mandating masks and vaccines then you are a fascist or your IQ is too low and should give up your right to vote.

Bacon's Rebellion 9 hours ago (Edited) remove link

//////////////////////////////////////////////
The Delta Variant in the UK
//////////////////////////////////////////////

June 25 th , 2021 - Public Health England

Summary:
Higher rates of "cases" for the "unvaccinated" with higher rates of hospitalizations and DEATHS for the "fully vaccinated" .

Cases:
7,235 "Fully Vaccinated"
53,822 "Unvaccinated"

Overnight Hospitalization required:
1.11% of the "Fully Vaccinated"
0.89% of the "Unvaccinated"

Deaths:
50 were "Fully Vaccinated" = 0.69% died
38 were "Unvaccinated" = 0.07% died

Death rate was 9.86 times higher for the vaccinated!

IF - 53,822 "Unvaccinated" cases = 38 deaths
Will - 53,822 "Vaccinated" cases = 375 deaths?
Will - the 142,000,000 "Fully Vaccinated" people in the USA suffer 979,800 Delta variant Deaths?

(Link downloads a PDF | SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern)

Public Health England

truth or go home 10 hours ago remove link

These are interesting facts. Some comments:

1. Flu deaths have been greatly exaggerated in recent years in order to push the flu vaccine. Just like Covid, they changed the definition of flu to count more deaths, so they could push the vaccine. Most of them are general respiratory deaths that can be/were reclassified to Covid.

2. There was a baby boom in 1946 and that was 75 years ago, so we should start seeing an acceleration from that about now, but there also has been massive population growth since then, so the effect will be muted.

3. I don't claim to understand virology, but if these things mutate so fast, they likely get less virulent rather than more. It certainly calls into question the entire vaccine program.

4. Vaxx the bats... I thought many of them died off from their own virus a few years ago, but I saw millions of them fly out from under a bridge in Austin a couple years ago.

6. This is logic beyond the understanding level of the idiot media folks - they would never be able to ask the question.

Nathan Hale PREMIUM 10 hours ago

It was a fungal infection that was/is killing bats in the US, for the record

Bacon's Rebellion 8 hours ago (Edited) remove link

Imagine the clusterphuek in the court system if these vaccines are connected with miscarriages...lawyers are salivating...your employer coerced you into vaccination...your baby died inside you...geesh...how anyone could take that chance!

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
An experiment on "millions of people"
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Angela Merkel: All of these vaccines are conditionally approved. In the course of this conditional approval, we are gaining experience for the first time on what happens if this vaccine is used on millions of people? ...In the phase of the conditional approval of such a vaccine is then very closely monitored - that is why everything is monitored so specifically - what side effects can happen or what cases or what certain things can occur.

Loads in German - Use Chrome to read in English: Angela Merkel:

Sigh. 11 hours ago remove link

The Delta Strain is supposedly more fearful and deadly and contagious than the 'original' product, why, exactly?

Where are the studies comparing the relative efficacy and methodology of the vectors? You recall the diagrams, the sneeze in one aisle of a supermarket, the blue haze covering three aisles? Is the Delta Strain so contagious it now goes seven aisles?

Instead of the diagram of the beachgoer getting virus'd from the airborne particulates from someone sneezing on a surfboard, are the viruses now coming in from further offshore, the oil rig 40 miles out?

Instead of just old people, who are easily infected with everything that comes along, now we must fear that kids and teens are susceptible? (Perhaps that's because they've worn masks for so long they aren't getting 'natural' immunological defenses?)

This is just another worldwide scare tactic designed to keep the masks on and the economy slowed. Look to the "Climate Change" set and the "One World Government" set for reasons why we're facing these "new" strains.

aegis551 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link

CDC says we have nothing to worry about. Covid will never get here.

CDC says we have the ability to defeat this thing they said would never get here.

CDC says dont worry you dont need to wear masks. Because they wont protect you from the virus.

CDC says some anti-viral medications may work. CDC corrects itself 24hrs later and says only a vaccine can save us. Dr Fauci admits he and his family have been taking hydroxychloroquine since the pandemic began. Even though they dont work.

CDC mandates everyone to wear masks because they will stop the spread.

CDC says we need to lock down for 2 weeks to stop the spread. CDC then mandates lockdowns in perpetuity.

CDC says, etc, etc...

Why the hell is anyone listening to the CDC?

pods 10 hours ago remove link

Usually for any scam if you look under the cover you will find the hand of government.

Ex. Pfizer has a vested interest of to keep their shots on the market. Profit motive and to repay their development costs for their mRNA shots. Clinical trials are not cheap.

Pfizer will use contacts to nudge policy in a direction that benefits them. Doesnt have to be evil, their job is to make stuff and sell it.

Why is Pfizer (could really be any of them) in this position? Because there was a government policy to rush a product to market, Operation Warp Speed.

If that policy was never enacted none of these companies would have undertaken the development of these shots with the resources they did. It would merely be pinheads doing animal studies still at this point because a typical vaccine takes a decade to develop, and mRNA has not been proven safe, so it would take longer to prove safety in target populations, including mutagenic/teratagenic studies.

So really it was a government policy that landed us where we are at now. This is not a political statement. No left/right BS is intended. Just a deductive theory of how the world works, at a level above the left/right pigpen.

Brushy 10 hours ago remove link

Rand Paul didnt tweet the most important part of that study;

Delta variant deaths;

117 total deaths

44 unvaccinated

23 single dose

50 fully vaccinated

Thats 73 deaths for those who have been fully or partially vaccinated vs only 44 deaths for the unvaxxed. Its looking more and more like the "Delta variant" is just code for vaccine injury.

FrankDrakman 10 hours ago remove link

On the one page of data shown, I calculated the following: (rounded)

Unvaxxed: 35,000/34 deaths ~= 1/1000

One shot < 21 days: 4,000/1 deaths ~= 1/4000

One shot > 21 days: 9,000/10 deaths ~= 1/900

Two shots > 14 days: 4,000/26 deaths = 1/150

The second shot's the killer!

Morse_Code 8 hours ago

The virus is a poor excuse for the "Great Reset" into corporate fascism and to check out the "Chicken Little" theory of the 'Sky is Falling' social syndrome.

They have already convinced society that white people are bad, men are really women, we don't need police if they take our guns away and inflation is good, the U.S. is better because of illegal immigration and that Biden won.

RathdrumGal 10 hours ago

I 100% agree. My career was spent in Critical Care nursing. I have seen people die and I have seen what torture comes from a fear of death. I am much more afraid of a vancomycin resistant enterococcus than COVID. Two days ago I was jet boating in Hell's Canyon in 117 degree heat. It was red neck heaven, no one on our boat was masked. We stopped for lunch on the way home in a college town. So many young healthy looking people wearing masks, with their young children masked! They can't all be on chemo, and I assume if they are that afraid of COVID they have been vaccinated. What gives?

[Jun 30, 2021] I plan on catching the Delta Variant on Delta Airlines. Its the kind of story I want to tell my grandchildren

Jun 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com


38 play_arrow


Sigh. 11 hours ago

Not a pandemic but a manufactured DemPanic. These snarling rabid far-left-wing dogs will seize and shake any opportunity they can get to further their RESET utopian agendas, including population reductions and striking down capitalism. So close to their goals now, they are gone wild in their attacks and without any reservations whatsoever.

Fear for this little Republic. Its time is almost up.

Kugelhagel 11 hours ago

It's like a priest in stone age: if harvest was low because weather was bad a priest said "gimme all your sheet and I'll talk to the gods" . When that doesn't work he says "of course it not worked, you not gave me enough! gimme more!" ... and some day it worked and weather was good and the priest was celebrated.
Same here ... Snakeoil sellers.

No-Go zone 7 hours ago remove link

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hat

The Bidet Administration Goes Haywire 11 hours ago (Edited)

I plan on catching the Delta Variant on Delta Airlines. Its the kind of story I want to tell my grandchildren.

[Jun 30, 2021] There are two types of people today, those who still listen to media and authority figures that are proven liars, and those who remember and are immune to further lies FROM PROVEN LIARS

Jun 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

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Son of Loki 10 hours ago (Edited)

"Recent research shows the vaxxinated group had a 18 point lower IQ score then the unvaxxinated group and a 128 point higher gullibility score."

Fact Checked : True ✔️

Cirdan PREMIUM 9 hours ago

Wow! I didn't know they had a gullibility score!

bidennotmyprez99 9 hours ago remove link

Sure that's true but in my circle, it's all the super intellectual types who are getting "vaxxed". You know, the ones who read the Guardian in the UK or the NYT in the US and sneer at we deplorables. They pride themselves on being free and critical thinkers. Yet, they are the ones getting the jab. Incredible. The other group I see all aroujnd me getting jabbed are the fundamental christians: the ones who vowed never to bow to Caesar. Yeah, right. They've been warning all their lives about the Mark of the Beast and fall at the first hurdle. In contrast, all the ordinary working class Joes I know see it for the nasty ******** that it is.

No-Go zone 6 hours ago

The ordinary working class still has a common sense.

Smiddywesson 11 hours ago

There are two types of people today, those who still listen to media and authority figures that are proven liars, and those who remember and are immune to further lies FROM PROVEN LIARS. Faucci and company are proven liars, he can't tell me the time of day with any credibility at all.

Gunston_Nutbush_Hall 7 hours ago (Edited)

h/t ZH Johnny Walker http://whale.to/vaccines.html
"If this is preventive medicine, I'll take my chances with disease." ~ Mendelsohn M.D

Dis-obey 8 hours ago

The Delta strain is weak sauce. With a mortality rate of 0.1% it's the same as H1N1. H1N1 has been with Humanity since at least 1918 and human immunology has coped to deal with it. Don't be fooled.

BendGuyhere 11 hours ago

1)The "case" number is pure JUNK SCIENCE. Meaningless. It is PCR cycles jacked up until it gives a "positive". This is for people (Idiots) who get their 'science' from the National Enquirer.

2) Corona viruses are NOTORIOUS for constantly rapidly mutating, like the Common Cold.

3) ALL pathogenic viruses, to the extent that there even is a pathogenic covid virus anymore, attenuate over time. That is they become LESS pathogenic and the human immune system becomes more and more competent at recognizing and neutralizing viruses within the same family.

4) Well "What about India?" What ABOUT India? Outside of the MSM, which has mutated into a vast labyrinth of lies geared towards social control, we have no way of verifying what actually happened in India.

BugMan 5 hours ago

The microorganism must be identified in all individuals affected by the disease, but not in healthy individuals.

The microorganism can be isolated from the diseased individual and grown in culture.

When introduced into a healthy individual , the cultured microorganism should cause disease.

The microorganism must then be re-isolated from the experimental host , and found to be identical to the original microorganism.

Robert Koch and Koch's Postulates | Basic Microbiology | Microbe Notes

dot_bust 7 hours ago

I'm struck by the fact that the news media constantly push the so-called Covid-19 "vaccines." Have the news media become pharmaceutical company sales reps ?

Every day, I see news articles proclaiming that the Covid-19 "vaccines" are effective against the variants. They cite new studies even though such studies take a lot more time to conduct than has been alloted for concrete conclusions.

Overall, the pimping of the Covid shots by reporters is suspect at best. These so-called journalists never mention treatments, only vaccines.

Bill of Rights 7 hours ago (Edited)

When was the last time the MEDIA was actually just that the Media? 1960s perhaps..

What you are subjected to now, or for the better term, Choose to watch now is trash where 99% of it is made up and false.

Conductor "Corn Pop" Angelo 8 hours ago

Following a citizen's petition, a Lisbon court was forced to provide verified COVID-19 mortality data, reports AndreDias.net .

According to the ruling , the number of verified COVID-19 deaths from January 2020 to April 2021 is only 152, not about 17,000 as claimed by government ministries.

All the "others" died for various reasons, although their PCR test was positive.

"We live in a fraud of unprecedented dimensions," wrote Dias.

https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/frontlinenews/lisbon-court-rules-only-0-9-of-verified-cases-died-of-covid-numbering-152-not-17000-claimed/

[Jun 30, 2021] New Lisenkoism: a Whore media complex coupled with a corrupted scientific community in bed with big pharma

Jun 30, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com


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leodogma01 10 hours ago

Predictable Propaganda, a Whore media complex coupled with a corrupted scientific community in bed with big pharma, any mention of therapeutics that work like Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin must be destroyed as it disqualifies these emergency gene therapy shots that are destroying human lives everywhere. This **** is Pure Evil !

[Jun 29, 2021] duf disk usage utility by Steve Emms

Jun 25, 2021 | www.linuxlinks.com

This is a series highlighting best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. There's a complete list of the tools in this series in the Summary section.

The Command Line Interface (CLI) is a way of interacting with your computer. To harness all the power of Linux, it's highly recommended mastering the interface. It's true the CLI is often perceived as a barrier for users migrating to Linux, particularly if they're grown up using GUI software exclusively. While Linux rarely forces anyone to use the CLI, some tasks are better suited to this method of interaction, offering inducements like superior scripting opportunities, remote access, and being far more frugal with a computer's resources.

duf is a simple disk usage utility that offers a more attractive representation than the classic df utility. It's written in Go.

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Installation

On a vanilla Ubuntu 21.04 system, we first need to install Go.

$ sudo apt install golang-go

Then clone the project's repository, and use Go to build the software.

$ git clone https://github.com/muesli/duf.git
$ cd duf
$ go build

Alternatively, there's a snap available which is installed with the command:

$ sudo snap install duf-utility

Snaps are universal software packages. They work across Linux on any distribution or version.

Next page: Page 2 – In Operation

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary


Complete list of articles in this series:

Excellent Utilities
tmux A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow
lnav Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting
Paperwork Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork
Abricotine Markdown editor with inline preview functionality
mdless Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files
fkill Kill processes quick and easy
Tusk An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential
Ulauncher Sublime application launcher
McFly Navigate through your bash shell history
LanguageTool Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages
peco Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful
Liquid Prompt Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh
Ananicy Shell daemon created to manage processes' IO and CPU priorities
cheat.sh Community driven unified cheat sheet
ripgrep Recursively search directories for a regex pattern
exa A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command
OCRmyPDF Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs
Watson Track the time spent on projects
fontpreview Quickly search and preview fonts
fd Wonderful alternative to the venerable find
scrcpy Display and control Android devices
duf Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df


[Jun 29, 2021] Excellent Utilities- cheat.sh - community driven cheat sheet - LinuxLinks

Jun 29, 2021 | www.linuxlinks.com

Excellent Utilities: cheat.sh – community driven cheat sheet October 21, 2019 Steve Emms CLI , Reviews , Software , Utilities

This is a series highlighting best-of-breed utilities. We're covering a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. There's a complete list of the tools in this series in the Summary section.

Erik Karlsson, one of our regular contributors, has curated the finest free books that help you learn whatever programming language takes your fancy. There's everything covered from C, C++, Java, Python, R, and much more. Link: Excellent Free Books to Master Programming .

The books offer an exceptional amount of information. But sometimes you'll need some very specific information that you can access instantly. Erik is currently curating his recommendations for high quality free programming tutorials. But until they're ready, we are showcasing a utility that offers an alternative to programming tutorials. Step forward cheat sheets with cheat.sh.

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What makes cheat.sh special? It offers unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets repositories of the world. cheat.sh uses selected community driven cheat sheet repositories and information sources, maintained by thousands of users, developers and authors all over the world. Besides covering 58 programming languages, it also offers cheat sheets for more than 1,000 Linux commands, and access to information from Stack Overflow.

Installation

You don't need to install cheat.sh to a local machine. The script has a curl/browser interface, so you can access the cheat sheets providing you have a working net connection.

But it's also possible to install a command line client (cht.sh) which offers additional flexibility.

Installing cht.sh on your local system is very straightforward. Just type at a shell prompt:

$ curl https://cht.sh/:cht.sh | sudo tee /usr/local/bin/cht.sh
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cht.sh

You'll need to install rlwrap and xsel with your distro's package manager if they're not already installed. On my Arch system, I typed:

$ sudo pacman -S rlwrap xsel

After the installation, cht.sh can be used locally, without accessing the public cheat.sh service. The cht.sh client has its configuration file located at ~/.cht.sh/cht.sh.conf. Use it to specify the query options that you want to use with each query.

[Jun 29, 2021] 31 Best Free Linux Backup Software by Steve Emms

Apr 23, 2020 | www.linuxlinks.com

Backup software is used to perform a complete back up of a file, data, database, system or server. It enables users to make a duplicate of everything contained on the original source. This type of software is also used to perform a recovery of the data or system in the event of a disaster.

Making file backups is an essential activity for all users, yet many users do not take adequate steps to protect their data. Whether a computer is being used in a corporate environment, or for private use, the machine's hard disk may fail without any warning signs. Alternatively, some data loss occurs as a result of human error. Without regular backups being made, data will inevitably be lost even if the services of a specialist recovery organisation are used.

While it has always been possible to use command line tools to backup files in Linux, this can be a daunting task for beginners and end-users. This article explores how making regular backups can be a painless task. We explore backup software with intuitive graphical interfaces, applications that backup systems with snapshots, whilst not forgetting the powerful command-line tools that exist.

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To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 31 high quality free Linux backup tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wishes to safeguard their hard work.

Linux Backup Tools

Now, let's explore the 31 backup tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action (where relevant), a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.

Backup
BackupPC High-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up PCs
restic Fast, efficient and secure backup software
Clonezilla Offers similar functionality to Symantec Ghost
TimeShift Takes regular incremental snapshots of the filesystem
Mondo Rescue A powerful disaster recovery suite
Duplicity Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup
Borg Deduplicating backup software
bup Backup a system based on the git packfile format
Déjà Dup Hides the complexity of doing backups the Right Way
Bacula Network backup, recovery and verification
Amanda Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
Duplicati Store encrypted backups online
Bareos Backup Archiving Recovery Open Sourced
rsync Fast remote file copy program
Back in Time Equivalent of OS X's Time Machine
UrBackup Easy to setup open source client/server backup system
Rescuezilla Easy backup, recovery & bare metal restore
KBackup Backup program targeted at non-computer experts
fwbackups Feature-rich backup software
rsnapshot Local and remote filesystem snapshot utility
Partclone Provides utilities to save and restore used blocks on a partition
XtraBackup Backup tool for InnoDB and XtraDB databases
kup Backup scheduler for the Plasma desktop
FOG Cloning / imaging solution / rescue suite
BURP Uses librsync to save network traffic and space
PING Also offers similar functionality to Symantec Ghost
tar Tar archiving utility
dar Full featured archiver with support for differential backups
Cronopete Graphical backup utility based on Apple Time Machine
SafeKeep Centralized and easy to use backup program
Cedar Backup Local and remote backups to CD or DVD media

You may have read the story about a man deleting his entire company with one mistaken piece of code: accidentally misusing rm -rf in Ansible. It was a fairly obvious hoax designed to be a viral marketing effort. It achieved that goal as scores of media sources carried the story. But at least it will have alerted readers to the importance of making sure their data is safe. But remember, human error is not the only source of data loss. Other ways of losing data include mechanical damage to RAID or disks, file system corruption, theft, fire, as well as viruses and malware.

[Jun 28, 2021] Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine recipients have lower antibody levels targeting the Delta variant

"Patients who had had COVID-19 within the past year and people vaccinated with two doses of Pfizer retained enough antibodies to be protected against the Indian variant, but three to six times less antibodies than against the UK variant, Schwartz said. The study shows that "this variant.. has acquired partial resistance to antibodies," Schwartz said." Pfizer jab less effective, still protects against Indian strain- study
Jun 28, 2021 | medicalxpress.com

in people who had been fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, levels of neutralising antibodies were more than five times lower against the B.1.617.2 variant when compared to the original strain, upon which current vaccines are based.

Importantly, this antibody response was even lower in people who had only received one dose. After a single dose of Pfizer-BioNTech, 79% of people had a quantifiable neutralising antibody response against the original strain, but this fell to 50% for B.1.1.7, 32% for B.1.617.2 and 25% for B.1.351.

While antibody levels decreased with age against all variants, no correlation was observed for sex or BMI.

[Jun 28, 2021] Fully vaccinated people have gotten the Delta COVID variant. Should we be worried-

Jun 28, 2021 | www.msn.com

More recently, there has been a Delta outbreak at the Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, with 16 patients and six staff infected. The majority experienced mild symptoms, though one required treatment in the intensive care unit. Of the 22, 11 had been fully vaccinated, while seven had one dose; all were given an mRNA vaccine, communications director Kerry Williamson of Alberta Health Services told Maclean's . (The province did not disclose whether the one admitted to ICU had been vaccinated.)

[Jun 28, 2021] Delta variant outbreak in Israel infecting vaccinated adults

Jun 28, 2021 | nypost.com

An outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in Israel has spread to some vaccinated people -- with about half of the adults infected fully inoculated with the Pfizer shot, a health official said.

[Jun 28, 2021] Coronavirus Vaccine Updates- FDA adds warning to vaccines about risk of heart inflammation

Jun 28, 2021 | www.msn.com

The US Food and Drug Administration added a warning about the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to fact sheets for Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines Friday.

The warning notes that reports of adverse events following vaccination -- particularly after the second dose -- suggest increased risks of both types of heart inflammation.

Earlier this week, vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention heard that the agency had received about 1,200 reports of such heart inflammation after 300 million doses of the two vaccines had been given.

[Jun 28, 2021] The last and only foreign scientist in the Wuhan lab speaks out - World News,The Indian Express

Jun 28, 2021 | indianexpress.com

Danielle Anderson was working in what has become the world's most notorious laboratory just weeks before the first known cases of Covid-19 emerged in central China. Yet, the Australian virologist still wonders what she missed.

An expert in bat-borne viruses, Anderson is the only foreign scientist to have undertaken research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology's BSL-4 lab, the first in mainland China equipped to handle the planet's deadliest pathogens. Her most recent stint ended in November 2019, giving Anderson an insider's perspective on a place that's become a flashpoint in the search for what caused the worst pandemic in a century.

The emergence of the coronavirus in the same city where institute scientists, clad head-to-toe in protective gear, study that exact family of viruses has stoked speculation that it might have leaked from the lab, possibly via an infected staffer or a contaminated object. China's lack of transparency since the earliest days of the outbreak fueled those suspicions, which have been seized on by the U.S. That's turned the quest to uncover the origins of the virus, critical for preventing future pandemics, into a geopolitical minefield.

me title=

The work of the lab and the director of its emerging infectious diseases section -- Shi Zhengli, a long-time colleague of Anderson's dubbed 'Batwoman' for her work hunting viruses in caves -- is now shrouded in controversy. The U.S. has questioned the lab's safety and alleged its scientists were engaged in contentious gain of function research that manipulated viruses in a manner that could have made them more dangerous.

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https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.469.0_en.html#goog_63817956 The last–and only–foreign scientist in the Wuhan lab speaks out Anderson's most recent stint ended in November 2019, giving her an insider's perspective on a place that's become a flashpoint in the search for what caused the worst pandemic in a century.(Bloomberg)

It's a stark contrast to the place Anderson described in an interview with Bloomberg News, the first in which she's shared details about working at the lab.

Half-truths and distorted information have obscured an accurate accounting of the lab's functions and activities, which were more routine than how they've been portrayed in the media, she said.

"It's not that it was boring, but it was a regular lab that worked in the same way as any other high-containment lab," Anderson said. "What people are saying is just not how it is."

Now at Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Anderson began collaborating with Wuhan researchers in 2016, when she was scientific director of the biosafety lab at Singapore's Duke-NUS Medical School. Her research -- which focuses on why lethal viruses like Ebola and Nipah cause no disease in the bats in which they perpetually circulate -- complemented studies underway at the Chinese institute, which offered funding to encourage international collaboration.

A rising star in the virology community, Anderson, 42, says her work on Ebola in Wuhan was the realization of a life-long career goal. Her favorite movie is "Outbreak," the 1995 film in which disease experts respond to a dangerous new virus -- a job Anderson said she wanted to do. For her, that meant working on Ebola in a high-containment laboratory.

Anderson's career has taken her all over the world. After obtaining an undergraduate degree from Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, she worked as a lab technician at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, then returned to Australia to complete a PhD under the supervision of eminent virologists John Mackenzie and Linfa Wang. She did post-doctoral work in Montreal, before moving to Singapore and working again with Wang, who described Anderson as "very committed and dedicated," and similar in personality to Shi.

"They're both very blunt with such high moral standards," Wang said by phone from Singapore, where he's the director of the emerging infectious diseases program at the Duke-NUS Medical School. "I'm very proud of what Danielle's been able to do."

On the Ground

Anderson was on the ground in Wuhan when experts believe the virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, was beginning to spread. Daily visits for a period in late 2019 put her in close proximity to many others working at the 65-year-old research center. She was part of a group that gathered each morning at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to catch a bus that shuttled them to the institute about 20 miles away.

As the sole foreigner, Anderson stood out, and she said the other researchers there looked out for her.

"We went to dinners together, lunches, we saw each other outside of the lab," she said.

From her first visit before it formally opened in 2018, Anderson was impressed with the institute's maximum biocontainment lab. The concrete, bunker-style building has the highest biosafety designation, and requires air, water and waste to be filtered and sterilized before it leaves the facility. There were strict protocols and requirements aimed at containing the pathogens being studied, Anderson said, and researchers underwent 45 hours of training to be certified to work independently in the lab.

The induction process required scientists to demonstrate their knowledge of containment procedures and their competency in wearing air-pressured suits. "It's very, very extensive," Anderson said.

Entering and exiting the facility was a carefully choreographed endeavor, she said. Departures were made especially intricate by a requirement to take both a chemical shower and a personal shower -- the timings of which were precisely planned.

Special Disinfectants

These rules are mandatory across BSL-4 labs, though Anderson noted differences compared with similar facilities in Europe, Singapore and Australia in which she's worked. The Wuhan lab uses a bespoke method to make and monitor its disinfectants daily, a system Anderson was inspired to introduce in her own lab. She was connected via a headset to colleagues in the lab's command center to enable constant communication and safety vigilance -- steps designed to ensure nothing went awry.

However, the Trump administration's focus in 2020 on the idea the virus escaped from the Wuhan facility suggested that something went seriously wrong at the institute, the only one to specialize in virology, viral pathology and virus technology of the some 20 biological and biomedical research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Virologists and infectious disease experts initially dismissed the theory, noting that viruses jump from animals to humans with regularity. There was no clear evidence from within SARS-CoV-2's genome that it had been artificially manipulated, or that the lab harbored progenitor strains of the pandemic virus. Political observers suggested the allegations had a strategic basis and were designed to put pressure on Beijing.

And yet, China's actions raised questions. The government refused to allow international scientists into Wuhan in early 2020 when the outbreak was mushrooming, including experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who were already in the region.

Beijing stonewalled on allowing World Health Organization experts into Wuhan for more than a year, and then provided only limited access. The WHO team's final report, written with and vetted by Chinese researchers, played down the possibility of a lab leak. Instead, it said the virus probably spread via a bat through another animal, and gave some credence to a favored Chinese theory that it could have been transferred via frozen food.

Never Sick

China's obfuscation led outside researchers to reconsider their stance. Last month, 18 scientists writing in the journal Science called for an investigation into Covid-19's origins that would give balanced consideration to the possibility of a lab accident. Even the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the lab theory hadn't been studied extensively enough.

But it's U.S. President Joe Biden's consideration of the idea -- previously dismissed by many as a Trumpist conspiracy theory -- that has given it newfound legitimacy. Biden called on America's intelligence agencies last month to redouble their efforts in rooting out the genesis of Covid-19 after an earlier report, disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, claimed three researchers from the lab were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms in November 2019.

What the World Wants China to Disclose in Wuhan Lab Leak Probe

Anderson said no one she knew at the Wuhan institute was ill toward the end of 2019. Moreover, there is a procedure for reporting symptoms that correspond with the pathogens handled in high-risk containment labs.

"If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick -- and I wasn't," she said. "I was tested for coronavirus in Singapore before I was vaccinated, and had never had it."

Not only that, many of Anderson's collaborators in Wuhan came to Singapore at the end of December for a gathering on Nipah virus . There was no word of any illness sweeping the laboratory, she said.

"There was no chatter," Anderson said. "Scientists are gossipy and excited. There was nothing strange from my point of view going on at that point that would make you think something is going on here."

The names of the scientists reported to have been hospitalized haven't been disclosed. The Chinese government and Shi Zhengli, the lab's now-famous bat-virus researcher, have repeatedly denied that anyone from the facility contracted Covid-19. Anderson's work at the facility, and her funding, ended after the pandemic emerged and she focused on the novel coronavirus.

'I'm Not Naive'

It's not that it's impossible the virus spilled from there. Anderson, better than most people, understands how a pathogen can escape from a laboratory. SARS, an earlier coronavirus that emerged in Asia in 2002 and killed more than 700 people, subsequently made its way out of secure facilities a handful of times, she said.

If presented with evidence that such an accident spawned Covid-19, Anderson "could foresee how things could maybe happen," she said. "I'm not naive enough to say I absolutely write this off."

And yet, she still believes it most likely came from a natural source. Since it took researchers almost a decade to pin down where in nature the SARS pathogen emerged, Anderson says she's not surprised they haven't found the "smoking gun" bat responsible for the latest outbreak yet.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is large enough that Anderson said she didn't know what everyone was working on at the end of 2019. She is aware of published research from the lab that involved testing viral components for their propensity to infect human cells. Anderson is convinced no virus was made intentionally to infect people and deliberately released -- one of the more disturbing theories to have emerged about the pandemic's origins.

Gain of Function

Anderson did concede that it would be theoretically possible for a scientist in the lab to be working on a gain of function technique to unknowingly infect themselves and to then unintentionally infect others in the community. But there's no evidence that occurred and Anderson rated its likelihood as exceedingly slim.

Getting authorization to create a virus in this way typically requires many layers of approval, and there are scientific best practices that put strict limits on this kind of work. For example, a moratorium was placed on research that could be done on the 1918 Spanish Flu virus after scientists isolated it decades later.

Even if such a gain of function effort got clearance, it's hard to achieve, Anderson said. The technique is called reverse genetics.

"It's exceedingly difficult to actually make it work when you want it to work," she said.

Anderson's lab in Singapore was one of the first to isolate SARS-CoV-2 from a Covid patient outside China and then to grow the virus. It was complicated and challenging, even for a team used to working with coronaviruses that knew its biological characteristics, including which protein receptor it targets. These key facets wouldn't be known by anyone trying to craft a new virus, she said. Even then, the material that researchers study -- the virus's basic building blocks and genetic fingerprint -- aren't initially infectious, so they would need to culture significant amounts to infect people.

Despite this, Anderson does think an investigation is needed to nail down the virus's origin once and for all. She's dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists that have ensued.

Top News Right Now CLICK HERE FOR MORE

One of a dozen experts appointed to an international taskforce in November to study the origins of the virus, Anderson hasn't sought public attention, especially since being targeted by U.S. extremists in early 2020 after she exposed false information about the pandemic posted online. The vitriol that ensued prompted her to file a police report. The threats of violence many coronavirus scientists have experienced over the past 18 months have made them hesitant to speak out because of the risk that their words will be misconstrued.

https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/show/0ygP4jm9c9SdqUM3C6DycM

The elements known to trigger infectious outbreaks -- the mixing of humans and animals, especially wildlife -- were present in Wuhan, creating an environment conducive for the spillover of a new zoonotic disease. In that respect, the emergence of Covid-19 follows a familiar pattern. What's shocking to Anderson is the way it unfurled into a global contagion.

"The pandemic is something no one could have imagined on this scale," she said. Researchers must study Covid's calamitous path to determine what went wrong and how to stop the spread of future pathogens with pandemic potential.

"The virus was in the right place at the right time and everything lined up to cause this disaster."

[Jun 28, 2021] All About Your A1C

Jun 28, 2021 | www.cdc.gov

All About Your A1C

All About Your A1C Español (Spanish) Arrows hitting a target

What has your blood sugar been up to lately? Get an A1C test to find out your average levels -- important to know if you're at risk for prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, or if you're managing diabetes.

The A1C test -- also known as the hemoglobin A1C or HbA1c test -- is a simple blood test that measures your average blood sugar levels over the past 3 months. It's one of the commonly used tests to diagnose prediabetes and diabetes, and is also the main test to help you and your health care team manage your diabetes. Higher A1C levels are linked to diabetes complications, so reaching and maintaining your individual A1C goal is really important if you have diabetes. What Does the A1C Test Measure?

When sugar enters your bloodstream, it attaches to hemoglobin, a protein in your red blood cells. Everybody has some sugar attached to their hemoglobin, but people with higher blood sugar levels have more. The A1C test measures the percentage of your red blood cells that have sugar-coated hemoglobin. Who Should Get an A1C Test, and When?

Testing for diabetes or prediabetes:
Get a baseline A1C test if you're an adult over age 45 -- or if you're under 45, are overweight, and have one or more risk factors for prediabetes or type 2 diabetes:

Managing diabetes :
If you have diabetes, get an A1C test at least twice a year, more often if your medicine changes or if you have other health conditions. Talk to your doctor about how often is right for you. How to Prepare for Your A1C Test

The test is done in a doctor's office or a lab using a sample of blood from a finger stick or from your arm. You don't need to do anything special to prepare for your A1C test. However, ask your doctor if other tests will be done at the same time and if you need to prepare for them. Your A1C Result

Diagnosing Prediabetes or Diabetes

Normal Below 5.7%
Prediabetes 5.7% to 6.4%
Diabetes 6.5% or above

A normal A1C level is below 5.7%, a level of 5.7% to 6.4% indicates prediabetes, and a level of 6.5% or more indicates diabetes. Within the 5.7% to 6.4% prediabetes range, the higher your A1C, the greater your risk is for developing type 2 diabetes.

Managing Diabetes
Your A1C result can also be reported as estimated average glucose (eAG), the same numbers (mg/dL) you're used to seeing on your blood sugar meter:

A1C %

eAG mg/dL

7

154

8

183

9

212

10

240

What Can Affect Your A1C Result? A patient using a Glucometer

Get your A1C tested in addition to -- not instead of -- regular blood sugar self-testing if you have diabetes.

Several factors can falsely increase or decrease your A1C result, including:

Let your doctor know if any of these factors apply to you, and ask if you need additional tests to find out. Your A1C Goal

The goal for most people with diabetes is 7% or less. However, your personal goal will depend on many things such as your age and any other medical conditions. Work with your doctor to set your own individual A1C goal.

Younger people have more years with diabetes ahead, so their goal may be lower to reduce the risk of complications, unless they often have hypoglycemia (low blood sugar, or a "low"). People who are older, have severe lows, or have other serious health problems may have a higher goal. A1C: Just Part of the Toolkit

A1C is an important tool for managing diabetes, but it doesn't replace regular blood sugar testing at home. Blood sugar goes up and down throughout the day and night, which isn't captured by your A1C. Two people can have the same A1C, one with steady blood sugar levels and the other with high and low swings.

If you're reaching your A1C goal but having symptoms of highs or lows, check your blood sugar more often and at different times of day. Keep track and share the results with your doctor so you can make changes to your treatment plan if needed.

[Jun 26, 2021] Israel which used Pfizer vaccine says the Delta variant is infecting vaccinated people, who represent as many as 50% of new cases; but they're less severe

This is a fiasco for Fauci "herd immunity" campaign and the US goverment official strategy -- full, if necessary compulsive, vaccination of population with the first generation of vaccines. It means that people vaccinated with the the first generation vaccines can become infected with Delta variant and spread the virus much like unvaccinated people.
Jun 26, 2021 | www.businessinsider.in

An Israeli receives a coronavirus vaccine in Tel Aviv, Israel, on January 6. Sebastian Scheiner/AP As many as half of new COVID-19 cases in Israel are vaccinated people, a health official suggested. The Delta variant, not as easily beaten by vaccines as other variants, is driving Israel's surge. The figure is likely an estimate, as the health ministry is still analyzing the cases. As Israel faces a surge in cases driven by the Delta variant, its health officials suggested that as many as half of new cases were among people who'd been vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated people who've come into contact with the Delta variant have no immunity and have to quarantine, Chezy Levy, the director-general of Israel's health ministry, said on Wednesday, Haaretz reported. Levy told the state broadcaster Kan Bet that about 40% to 50% of new cases appeared to be people who had been vaccinated, Haaretz reported.

He did not appear to specify a time frame for the new cases. The figure is likely an estimate, as the ministry is still analyzing the cases. On Monday, Levy said that a third of the new daily cases were people who had been vaccinated.

[Jun 26, 2021] The End of Faucism is Nigh as Democrats Ditch the Doctor by JD Rucker

"Objective judgement is our jugement about the people we do not like ;-)"
In view of the fact that Delta (Indian) variant can infect vaccinated with the first generation of vaccines people Fauci statement "when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community." i obviously wrong. Delta Covid-19 Variant Can Infect Vaccinated People
See also Delta variant infected two Orange County residents who were fully vaccinated - Orlando Sentinel and Just 26 fully vaccinated people have died from Delta variant
May 16, 2021 | freedomfirstnetwork.com

Those who don't get their news from mainstream media have been aware of Anthony Fauci's connection to "gain of function" research for months. Now, mainstream media is picking it up so the White House is scrambling.

For months, there wasn't a day that went by when Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn't doing multiple interviews spreading fear of Covid-19, demanding people take the various "vaccines," and changing his talking points from moment to moment on a slew of healthcare-related issues. We saw a clear change last week when the White House's chief doc seemed to fly under the radar for the first time since Joe Biden took office.

It all comes down to "gain of function" research that is almost certainly the cause of the Wuhan Flu. Developed in the Wuhan Virology Lab, Covid-19 either escaped or was intentionally released. While many in academia still hold onto the notion that the pandemic was started by bats, they do so simply because it hasn't -- and likely cannot -- be completely ruled out as long as the Chinese Communist Party has a say in the matter. But many are now accepting the likelihood that it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab as a result of "gain of function" research.

We also now know that Fauci has been a huge proponent of this research and he participated in funding it at the Wuhan Virology Lab. More evidence is emerging every day despite the bad doctor's protestations. And when I say "we also now know," that's to say more mainstream media watchers know. Those who turn to alternative media have known about Fauci's involvement with the Wuhan Virology Lab for a while.

They've been trying to cover their tracks. A bombshell revelation from The National Pulse yesterday showed they realized this was going to be a problem long before Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson started calling Fauci out.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology scrubbed the U.S. National Institutes of Health as one of its research partners from its website in early 2021. The revelation comes despite Dr. Anthony Fauci insisting no relationship existed between the institutions.

Archived versions of the Wuhan lab's site also reveal a research update – " Will SARS Come Back? " – appearing to describe gain-of-function research being conducted at the institute by entities funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

On March 21st, 2021, the lab's website listed six U.S.-based research partners: University of Alabama, University of North Texas, EcoHealth Alliance, Harvard University, The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States, and the National Wildlife Federation.

One day later, the page was revised to contain just two research partners – EcoHealth Alliance and the University of Alabama. By March 23rd, EcoHealth Alliance was the sole partner remaining .

EcoHealth Alliance is run by long-standing Chinese Communist Party-partner Dr. Peter Daszak , who National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam has repeatedly claimed will be the first "fall guy" of the Wuhan lab debacle.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology's decision to wipe the NIH from its website came amidst heightened scrutiny that the lab was the source of COVID-19 – and that U.S. taxpayer dollars from the NIH may have funded the research. The unearthing of the lab's attempted coverup also follows a heated exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Fauci, who attempted to distance his organization from the Wuhan lab.

Beyond establishing a working relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan Institue of Virology, now-deleted posts from the site also detail studies bearing the hallmarks of gain-of-function research conducted with the Wuhan-based lab. Fauci, however, asserted to Senator Paul that "the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

There is still a tremendous gap between those who know the truth about Fauci and those who still think he's just a smart little guy who tells Joe Biden what to do when it comes to Covid. As we've documented multiple times in the past, there seems to be a cult of personality surrounding Fauci, or as many have called it, Faucism. He is practically worshipped as a savior by millions who believe everything he says even if he contradicts something he had said in the past.

Today, he was interviewed on CBS News during "Face the Nation." It was a softball interview, as always, and at no point was "gain of function" research discussed. Instead, John Dickerson tried to sound smart and Fauci gave him kudos in an odd back-and-forth promoting vaccines.

JOHN DICKERSON : So, if- if a person is deciding whether or not to get vaccinated, they have to keep in mind whether it's going to keep them healthy. But based on these new findings, it would suggest they also have an opportunity, if vaccinated, to knock off or block their ability to transmit it to other people. So, does it increase the public health good of getting the vaccination or make that clearer based on these new findings?

DR. FAUCI : And you know, JOHN, you said it very well. I could have said it better. It's absolutely the case. And that's the reason why we say when you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health, that of the family, but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. And in other words, you become a dead end to the virus. And when there are a lot of dead ends around, the virus is not going to go anywhere. And that's when you get a point that you have a markedly diminished rate of infection in the community. And that's exactly the reason, and you said it very well, of why we encourage people and want people to get vaccinated. The more people you get vaccinated, the safer the entire community is.

JOHN DICKERSON : And do you think now that this guidance has come out on relaxing the mass mandates if you've been vaccinated, that people who might have been hesitant before will start to get vaccinated in greater numbers?

DR. FAUCI : You know, I hope so, JOHN. The underlying reason for the CDC doing this was just based on the evolution of the science that I mentioned a moment ago. But if, in fact, this serves as an incentive for people to get vaccinated, all the better. I hope it does, actually.

Don't let the presence of this interview fool you. It was almost certainly scheduled before the "gain of function" research discussion hit the mainstream. But as Revolver News reported today, we should start seeing less and less of Fauci going forward.

What happened to the almighty Dr. Fauci? Last week he was on TV telling all of us that life wouldn't get back to normal for at least another year or so, and this week he's pretty much gone. So what happened?

Well, a lot, actually. The biggest turn for Fauci involves 3 little words: Gain of Function. It was this past week when the "gain of function" dots were publicly connected to the good doctor. This is nothing new for those of us on the right. Here on Revolver, we've covered Fauci's gain of function research extensively and the evidence against him is very damning.

A couple of months ago Fox News Host Steve Hilton blew the lid off of Fauci's macabre obsession (and funding) of research involving the manipulation of highly contagious viruses. Hilton laid the groundwork, but it was Senator Rand Paul who called out Fauci and his ghoulish research face to face during a Senate hearing.

But even more notable, is that the CDC just updated their guidelines on mask-wearing and essentially ended the pandemic -- a pandemic that Fauci has been the proud face of for over a year now -- and when that announcement hit, he was nowhere to be found. And his absence didn't go unnoticed.

Yes indeed, you'd think that Fauci would have been front and center to discuss the CDC's new guidelines the moment the news hit. The "Golden Boy" taking yet another victory lap. After all, Fauci never misses a moment in the spotlight. But he was not hitting the airwaves with the typical fanfare.

It is still very possible that Fauci can make a resurgence. His fan-base is up there with Meghan Markle and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though even more devoted than the divas'. Unlike other useful idiots, the White House will not be able to detach easily from Fauci, nor do they want to. At this point, they're telling him to lay low and avoid any interviews in which they do not have complete control over the "journalist" involved. John Dickerson has been a Democrat Party pawn for decades.

Behind the scenes, they're already planning on ditching him. It will be done with all the pomp one would expect for one of their heroes and will be used to mark the end of the "emergency" in the United States. He'll still be promoting vaccines and will try to stay in his precious limelight, but Democrats are ready to move on and open up the country. It has just been too politically suicidal to persist with their lockdown mentality.

The key to seeing Fauci's narcissistic reign end is for patriots to continue to hammer him on his involvement with developing Covid-19. His beloved "gain of function research" needs to be explained to any who will listen. Then, maybe, Fauci will go away.

... ... ...

[Jun 26, 2021] Fauci refused to fund large clinical trials for antivirals in March 2020

Jun 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com


4 play_arrow

Big Tech Is Evil 1 hour ago remove link

Fauci should be rotten in prison now for the very simple reason that it refused to fund large clinical trials for antivirals in March 2020. We only have a dozen antivirals that we can try and yet, even today, after 15 months and 600k deaths the CDC still doesn't know if Ivermectin works. Even if it worked to prevent 10% of deaths... out of 600k that's 60k. A stadium full of people that shouldn't have died.

[Jun 26, 2021] 'You Were Wrong About A Lot Of Sh-t'- Maher Blasts Big Tech, CDC Over Lab-Leak Censorship - ZeroHedge

Jun 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

Bill Maher slammed Big Tech on Friday's episode of his show, "Real Time with Bill Maher," criticizing Facebook and Google for censoring content discussing the COVID-19 lab-leak theory.

"I find this outrageous. Facebook banned any post for four months about COVID coming from a lab," said Maher, adding "Now, even the Biden administration is looking into it."

incharge1976 PREMIUM 1 hour ago (Edited)

Google and the like are not search engines, video sites, or social media sites. They are propaganda machines

The First Rule 42 minutes ago (Edited)

Yeah, Yandex.com is head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to getting around pretty much any US based web search censorship.

It will show you the things Google is trying to hide.

[Jun 26, 2021] The Racism Of Low Expectations

Sounds like a great book for Tucker to recommend to that Army Chief of Staff!
Notable quotes:
"... I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism. ..."
"... A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say you are a victim." ..."
Jun 26, 2021 | www.wsj.com

Cindy Fryman 4 hours ago

Recently the Joint Chiefs of Staff remarked that the US military should teach CTR to our military essentially because they shoild teach all theories.

That doesn't make sense to me but I would like to put another theory into the public sphere. I call it ROLE -- The Racism Of Low Expectations. This phenomenon has done ten times more to damage Black lives than can be attributed to CRT or institutionalized racism.

A subset of ROLE is MVT. This is Manufactured Victimhood Theory. This comes about from influential Black "leaders" who, instead of teaching Blacks the truth about how to live good lives (work hard, develop skills, etc.), they told them to apply as their life strategy "say you are a victim."

I am hoping that ROLE and MVT will become part of all aspects of American life -- all levels of education, the military, businesses, the media, etc.

If the goal really is to improve Black lives, ROLE and MVT should be the rage over the next few years.

Tom F

John Callahan 4 hours ago
Corporate America 'makes money critiquing itself.' The rest of us pay the price in diminished freedom.
Wokeism is fascism dressed up in new clothes- the censorship, demonization of groups and individuals and the physical violence against people and property remain the same. Corporate America has one overriding interest- making money. Paying the left (and yes, fascism is of the left) through critiquing itself and token monetary donations is a get out of jail free card for Corporate America.

"Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."
- Thomas Sowell

Dom Fried 4 hours ago
It will end the same. Almost, because there will be nobody to stop it.
Ed Baron 3 hours ago
Very well said, John. Fascism is a fundamental element or subset of Leftist or Marxist thought. It demands conformity of the individual to the new "woke" state and it punishes any who dissent. It's not incidental that American Leftists, including FDR, loved Mussolini prior to WWII. That bromance has been washed clean, and attributed instead to the Right. Such a typical transference technique used by Marxist.
Alex Guiness
I interpret your supposition 'White male global warming', as meaning White Males are particularly flatulent hence are producing Green House Gases with their diets of greasy meats (some on sticks), carnival funnel cakes, corn dogs, Philly cheese-steaks, Popeyes fried chicken, all washed down with Bud Light. Would it kill them to have a salad now and then? How can their spouses stand to be around them unless they are also consuming the same foods. Imagine what it must be like at a sermon in a Lutheran Church, the whitest church of all. They leave the doors open else a spark could set the whole place ablaze.
carol Perry
Thanks for today's chuckle Alex.
Alex Guiness
read my smurfs comment. i just posted it
Lynn Silton
Mr. Ramaswamy is right in every way! I don't belong to the Woke Church. I'll never join. America is an inspirational country as is all it's written declarations. We, the people rule. No religion can overrule it. We will not allow religious 'honor killings.' They are murder here. We will not allow Wokism here it is the murder of our hopes and dreams which belong to everybody regardless of appearance. I don't even know how appearance (of all things) became a religion. The whole thing is so sick, people of all shades are speaking out and we will put this crazy idea down. Here, we marry across all appearances. New people are often different in appearance than parents. Woke will die of that alone. That's why we have an immigration 'problem' . People love our constitution and Declaration of Independence. People love that they rule here, not the government. That's our creed and promise. Help protect it!!

[Jun 26, 2021] The societies that punish political opinion outside of of approved by the ruling class and the dominant party include the USA

Jun 26, 2021 | www.wsj.com

H

Holly Mottai

Note well... the only societies I know that condemn free speech and punish those that don't adhere to 'the way' are China, Russia and North Korea. Can you spot the theme?
Anthony Aaron
You forgot cuba and the United States, at least since the early days of the 21st Century

[Jun 26, 2021] Groupthink inherently discounts primary evidence in favor of social affirmation

Jun 26, 2021 | www.zerohedge.com

gcjohns1971 2 hours ago

Personalities of the Left are group-thinkers, not critical-thinkers.

Group-thinkers have two giant vulnerabilities: They're easily misled by ANYONE with harisma, and psychopaths actively exploit that weakness. And inasmuch as group-think inherently discounts primary evidence in favor of social affirmation, group-think is ALWAYS wrong.

[May 28, 2021] Globally replace text in several files - Rosetta Code

May 28, 2021 | rosettacode.org

Perl [ edit ]

perl -pi -e "s/Goodbye London\!/Hello New York\!/g;" a.txt b.txt c.txt

[Feb 20, 2017] How to delete or remove a MySQL-MariaDB user account on Linux or Unix

Feb 20, 2017 | www.cyberciti.biz
How to delete or remove a MySQL/MariaDB user account on Linux or Unix by Vivek Gite on February 15, 2017 last updated February 16, 2017 in Linux , MySQL , UNIX I created a MySQL / MariaDB user account using this page . Now, I have deleted my wordpress blog and I want to delete that user account including database too. How do I delete or remove a MySQL or MariaDB user account on Linux or Unix-like system using mysql command line option?

Both MySQL and MariaDB is an open source database management system. In this quick tutorial, you will learn how to delete ore remove user account in MySQL or MariaDB database on Linux or Unix-like system.

Warning : Backup your database before you type any one of the following command.

Step 1 � Steps for removing a MySQL/MariaDB user

If you decided to remove open source application such as WordPress or Drupal you need to remove that user account. You need to remove all permissions/grants, and delete the user from the MySQL table. First, login as mysql root user to the MySQL/MariaDB server using the shell, run:
$ mysql -u root -p mysql
OR
$ mysql -u root -h server-name-here -p mysql
Sample outputs:

Fig.01: The MySQL/MariaDB shell

Fig.01: The MySQL/MariaDB shell

Step 2 � List all mysql users

Once you have a MySQL or MariaDB prompt that looks very similar to fig.01, type the following command at mysql> or mariadb> prompt to see a list of MySQL/MariaDB users:
mariadb> SELECT User,Host FROM mysql.user;
Sample outputs:

Fig.02: How to see/get a list of MySQL/MariaDB users accounts

Fig.02: How to see/get a list of MySQL/MariaDB users accounts
In this above example, I need to delete a mysql user named 'bloguser'@'localhost'.

Step 3 � List grants for a mysql user

To see what grants bloguser have, enter:
mariadb> SHOW GRANTS FOR 'bloguser'@'localhost';
Sample outputs:

Fig.03: Display user grants

Fig.03: Display user grants
Where,

  1. bloguser � Mysql/Maridb user name
  2. localhost � Mysql/Mariadb host name
  3. mywpblog � Database name
Step 4 � Revoke all grants for a mysql user

Type the following sql command:
mariadb> REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES, GRANT OPTION FROM 'bloguser'@'localhost';
Sample outputs:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Step 5 � Remove/Delete the user from the user table

Type the following sql command:
mariadb> DROP USER 'bloguser'@'localhost';
Sample outputs:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Step 6 � Delete the database

Type the following command:
mariadb> DROP DATABASE mywpblog;
Sample outputs:

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

And there you have it. A MySQL/MariaDB user deleted or removed from the server on Unix or Linux via command line option.

[Dec 08, 2014] Adminer - A lightweight and full-featured database management tool

Adminer is a full-featured database management tool written in PHP. Unlike phpMyAdmin, it consists of a single file. Adminer is available for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL and Oracle.

The software acts as a drop-in-replacement for phpMyAdmin with a better user interface, better support for MySQL features, higher performance and more security.

[Oct 21, 2012] The Split Between Larry Ellison And Marc Benioff Is Getting Bigger, Uglier, And Geekier by Julie Bort

Oct. 17, 2012 | Business Insider

On Friday, Salesforce.com announced it wants to hire 40 to 50 people next year to work on a "big project" using the open-source database PostgreSQL-a big threat to Oracle's core database offering.

Salesforce offers software over the Internet to businesses. That software, in turn, runs on Oracle today. The rumor is that Salesforce may be looking at ways to change it.

This ad came just days after Ellison publicly dissed Salesforce.com for offering PostgreSQL to its Heroku cloud-computing customers while using Oracle for its bread-and-butter Salesforce.com app.

During a talk at Oracle's OpenWorld conference earlier this month in San Francisco, Ellison bragged about Oracle's eat-your-own-dogfood policy: Oracle's cloud software runs on Oracle technology.

"Salesforce.com bases its entire cloud on Oracle database," Ellison said, as reported by Neil McAllister of the Register, "but its database platform offering is PostgreSQL. I find that interesting."

Naturally, Salesforce.com is a big Oracle customer. Larry Ellison helped found Salesforce.com and the whole idea of cloud computing. Salesforce.com's CEO, Marc Benioff, studied at Ellison's knee as an Oracle executive.

But as the two companies increasingly compete with each other, the CEOs are now on the outs. Benioff was removed as a keynote speaker from last year's OpenWorld-so he set up a rival keynote across the street. He wasn't even invited to this year's conference.

Salesforce's job ad appeared a few days after Ellison's remarks. It says that project involves the "design and implement major pieces of the Salesforce.com core database infrastructure" using PostgreSQL.

Salesforce.com wouldn't comment on the project, or the rumors that this was an attempt to switch away from Oracle.

"We're always evaluating/exploring different technologies," a Salesforce spokesperson told Business Insider. "We have a broad strategy when it comes to data persistence which includes not only Oracle, but also Postgres, HBase, homegrown file storage, etc."

But some important backers of PostgreSQL sure are excited.

A company called EnterpriseDB makes money by offering commercial support for a version of PostgreSQL.

In the past four years, EnterpriseDB has grown its customer base from about 200 in 2008, to about 2,000 today, including Sony Online Entertainment and TD Ameritrade Ed Boyajian, the company's CEO, Ed Boyajian, told Business Insider. (Skype and Instagram famously use the free, open source version, too.)

"Many of those customers have migrated off Oracle," he said. "That's our primary business."

He added that when a company "of the scale" of Salesforce.com is seen making "making a big commitment" to PostgreSQL, more enterprises will view it as a viable alternative to the Oracle database, too.

LevelDB A Fast Persistent Key-Value Store

Google Open Source Blog

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 | 10:00 AM

Labels: c++, leveldb, library, storage

LevelDB is a fast key-value storage engine written at Google that provides an ordered mapping from string keys to string values. We are pleased to announce that we are open sourcing LevelDB under a BSD-style license.

LevelDB is a C++ library that can be used in many contexts. For example, LevelDB may be used by a web browser to store a cache of recently accessed web pages, or by an operating system to store the list of installed packages and package dependencies, or by an application to store user preference settings. We designed LevelDB to also be useful as a building block for higher-level storage systems. Upcoming versions of the Chrome browser include an implementation of the IndexedDB HTML5 API that is built on top of LevelDB. Google's Bigtable manages millions of tablets where the contents of a particular tablet are represented by a precursor to LevelDB. The Riak distributed database has added support for using LevelDB for its per-node storage.

We structured LevelDB to have very few dependencies and it can be easily ported to new systems; it has already been ported to a variety of Unix based systems, Mac OS X, Windows, and Android.

LevelDB has good performance across a wide variety of workloads; we have put together a benchmark comparing its performance to SQLite and Kyoto Cabinet. The Riak team has compared LevelDB's performance to InnoDB. A significant difference from similar systems like SQLite and Kyoto Cabinet is that LevelDB is optimized for batch updates that modify many keys scattered across a large key space. This is an important requirement for efficiently updating an inverted index that does not fit in memory.

LevelDB is available on Google Code, we hope you'll find it useful for your projects.

By Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat; Google Fellows

[Oct 27, 2008] ora2pg 4.9 by Gilles DAROLD

About: Ora2Pg is a Perl module to export an Oracle database schema to a PostgreSQL compatible schema. It connects your Oracle database, extracts its structure, and generates an SQL script that you can load into your PostgreSQL database. It dumps the database schema (tables, views, sequences, indexes, grants) with primary, unique, and foreign keys into PostgreSQL syntax without editing the SQL code generated. It also dump Oracle data into PostgreSQL DB as online process or into a file. You can choose what columns can be exported for each table.

Changes: This release add extraction of a function-based index that appears as SYS_NC, and a new configuration option to not export alter sequence after data export

[Aug 05, 2008] Automation for the people Hands-free database migration

Most of the applications I've worked with over the years have been enterprise applications requiring the management of lots of data. Development teams working on such projects often treat the database as a completely separate entity from the application. This sometimes stems from an organizational structure that separates the database team from the application-development teams. Other times, it's simply what teams are used to doing. Either way, I've found that this separation leads to some of the following practices (or lack thereof):

These are inefficient practices that leave developers out of sync with data changes. Moreover, they can cause the application's users to experience problems with inconsistent or corrupt data.

Figure 1 illustrates the manual approach that's often used on software development projects. Manual changes are often inconsistently applied and error prone, and they can make it difficult to undo what's already been done or analyze the history of database changes over time. For example, a DBA might remember to apply changes to the lookup data on one occasion, but a developer might forget to insert this data later into the same table.

You can avoid the manual approach's pitfalls by implementing a database change strategy that minimizes human intervention. Through a combination of practices and tools, you can use a consistent and repeatable process for applying changes to your database and data. In this article, I'll cover:

Dr. Dobb's Database Report / A tool for prototyping data structures by Sergei Savchenko

If you are familiar with SQL, then the small relational database language (SRDL) Sergei presents here will seem like an old friend. SRDL is designed to provide your applications with flexibility in dealing with database problems

Sergei is a developer for Counselware in Montreal, Canada. He can be contacted at [email protected]


When developing software, we are often confronted with what appears to be a typical database problem, yet ends up requiring operations some database engines can't deliver. Obviously, what we need in such situations is a tool that lets us quickly create custom, specialized features. The tool I present in this article -- a small relational database language called SRDL -- is designed to provide applications with a considerable amount of flexibility in dealing with database problems. If you are familiar with SQL, you will find a lot of similarities in SRDL. There are differences between the two languages, of course, primarily in the definition of relations, structure of operators, and typing scheme.

SRDL is implemented in C++ (using template classes). The current implementation is about 2500 lines of code. It should compile under GCC and most other modern C++ compilers, and run on practically any platform. The implementation can either be used interactively or embedded into C++ applications that call member functions implementing the operators explicitly. The complete SRDL source code (distributed as freeware) is available electronically; see "Programmer's Services," page 3.

There are two distinguishable levels in the SRDL implementation -- the lower-storage level and the upper-manipulation level. There is a minimal interface between the two, and all algorithmic complexity of operators is in the upper level, with the lower level providing a way to read or write into some particular format on some storage. Multiple implementations of the lower level are possible, so that relations can be stored in different formats (or even in different storage areas; for example, placed into memory to speed up execution of consecutive operators).

Linux Today - PostgreSQL or MySQL Which is Faster

Victor R. Rivarola S. - Subject: MySQL? Not even in the race. ( Apr 24, 2007, 23:09:27 )

Don't beleive me? Make a file named mysql.sql and feed it into mysql:
CREATE TABLE A
(ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
);

CREATE TABLE B
(ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
,A INT NOT NULL REFERENCES A(ID)
);

-- These statements should fail because of
-- referential integrity.

INSERT INTO B (ID,A) VALUES (5,5);
INSERT INTO A (ID) VALUES (5);

-- If we got this far, we can already laugh at this "database"'s referential integrity.

-- Now lets check data type safety.

INSERT INTO B (ID,A) VALUES ('A',7);

-- MySQL and SQLite both finish these statements succesfully, showing that any referal to them as database should be enough to make anybody knowleadgable die of laugher.

-- Now, let us test the contents of both A and B.

SELECT * FROM A:
SELECT * FROM B;

Run this script if you dare on a MySQL server. It will spit on your face:

ID
5
ID A
5 5
0 7

Feed it like this:

cat mysql.sql | mysql database_name

Note that if you copy the script to the clipboard and then paste it back into the MySQL console, it will at least give you a warning when you try to insert 'A' into ID, but it will go on happily and do it. Better, but not enough.

Any database that will let you execute those commands in that order is not fit for a children's toy.

MySQL does, Postgres doesn't. Microsoft Access doesn't either, so it is a better database than MySQL.

Yes, I know about InnoDB. However, it is not the default table type. Instead, MyISAM piece of junk is. Which means that of all the people who use MySQL, very few actually use InnoDB. So, argument is moot.

Besides, to use InnoDB you would need to add a "TYPE=InnoDB" after the closing parenthesis and before the final semicolon. This totally non-standard "feature" (MS style).

Besides how does this helps the type check misfeature? It doesn't. Once again you must resort to a nonstandard, nondefault, totally unknown, mode change command to fix it.

I would end up calling MySQL a toy, but even that would be WAY too generous.

As for the fact of its popularity, if you believe that fallacious argument you would have to conclude the obviously untrue statement that Microsoft Windows XP is much, much, much better than Linux.

[Jun 07, 2007] Tuning LAMP systems, Part 3: Tuning your MySQL server by Sean A. Walberg

Make your MySQL server fly with these server tuning tips

07 Jun 2007 (IBM DeveloperWorks)

Applications using the LAMP (Linux�, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl) architecture are constantly being developed and deployed. But often the server administrator has little control over the application itself because it's written by someone else. This series of three articles discusses many of the server configuration items that can make or break an application's performance. This third article, the last in the series, focuses on tuning the database layer for maximum efficiency.

A Message to the Community

Farewell Foxbase: "We are announcing today that there will be no VFP 10"

We have been asked about our plans for a new version of VFP. We are announcing today that there will be no VFP 10. VFP9 will continue to be supported according to our existing policy with support through 2015 (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7992). We will be releasing SP2 for Visual FoxPro 9 this summer as planned, providing fixes and additional support for Windows Vista.

Additionally, as you know, we've been working on a project codenamed Sedna for the past year or so. Sedna is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and provides a number of new features including enhanced connectivity to SQL Server, integration with parts of the .NET framework, support for search using Windows Desktop Search and Windows Vista as well as enhanced access to VFP data from Visual Studio.

Concurrently, the community has been using CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com) to enhance VFP using these same capabilities in the VFPx and VFPy projects. Some of these community driven enhancements include:

To reiterate, today we are announcing that we are not planning on releasing a VFP 10 and will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge. The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative. You can expect to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of summer 2007.


The VFP team

Microsoft Visual FoxPro Roadmap

Microsoft Visual FoxPro Roadmap

The VFP team made a special announcement to the community on March 13, 2007. The team has announced that there will be no VFP 10. VFP 9 will continue to be supported as per the support policy (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=7992) through 2015.

After the release of Visual FoxPro 9.0 and Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack1, the Visual FoxPro team at Microsoft has been working on a new project code-named Sedna. Sedna takes advantage of enhancements in Visual FoxPro 9.0. The primary goal of Sedna is to expand on the ability of Visual FoxPro-based solutions to better integrate with other Microsoft products and technologies.

Features in Sedna will target Visual FoxPro interoperability with application components created using Visual Studio 2005, the .NET Framework 2.0 and SQL Server 2005. Sedna will also help improve the ability for Visual FoxPro 9.0 solutions to be successfully deployed on Windows Vista. Sedna is planned to be released before the end of Summer of 2007.

Additional information can be found in the transcript of theVisual FoxPro DevCon 2005 Interview with Alan Griver and Ken Levy from June 2005, as well as the September 30th 2005 audio podcast FoxShow #24: Interview with Ken Levy - both interviews discuss details of the Visual FoxPro Roadmap. The complete SouthwestFox 2005 keynote slide deck on the Visual FoxPro Roadmap and community news now online, 1.6MB PPT download SouthwestFox2005_Keynote.ppt.

There are two pillars for the main themes of Sedna,Interoperability and Extensibility. Some of the extensibility enhancements will target report system features like additional report output file types. For interoperability, the areas (in priority) including the following upcoming Microsoft products and technologies:

Sedna Feature Overview documents describe the various aspects of Sedna.

Visual FoxPro will also release a service pack that includes several critical fixes, including those required to better support Windows Vista.

As indicated in prior public statements, Microsoft does not plan to merge Visual FoxPro into Visual Studio .NET, nor are there plans to create a new Visual FoxPro .NET programming language. Visual FoxPro will remain stand-alone Win32 based, and will run on 64-bit Windows in 32-bit compatibility mode.

For more information about Visual FoxPro, including answers toVisual FoxPro FAQ, go to the Visual FoxPro Developer Center Web site. at http://msdn.com/vfoxpro.

(Updated: March 2007)

Microsoft Does Open-Source and FoxPro a Real Favor

Not true, but interesting :-)

"Microsoft has announced that it will open-source the core portions of the Visual FoxPro DBMS software to its CodePlex community development site. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer be making new versions of the FoxPro DBMS."

Comment

Microsoft will be releasing the completed Sedna work on CodePlex at no charge. The components written as part of Sedna will be placed in the community for further enhancement as part of our shared source initiative.

You can expect to see the Sedna code on CodePlex sometime before the end of summer 2007.

NOTE that the released part is Sedna and NOT VFP nor VFP core elements!

Sedna is a project Microsoft has been working on for the past year or so. Sedna is built using the extensibility model of VFP9 and provides features like better connectivity to SQL Server, integration with parts of the .NET framework, wrappers for Vista APIs to make it easier to write applications that run on Vista machines, as well as better support for VFP data in Visual Studio.

The VFP Community Message is at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb308952.aspx

Thanks!

[Oct 30, 2006] Oracle's Red Hat support spells trouble for Sun InfoWorld Column 2006-10-30 By Neil McAllister

Sun used to provide slightly cheaper support then Red Hat. Oracle undercut this price so this advantage is lost. Still Solaris stands on its own as an enterprise OS (and it serves as Oracle standard 64-bit platform) and in this role it competes more with AIX and HP-UX then Linux (although X86-64 changed that). So this development might hurt Sun a little bit on low end but it is not applicable to midrange and high-end server were Oracle mainly used. Actually IBM AIX is the major Sun's competitor in his space due to Power 5 CPUs scalability. But all three major Unix vendors have sizable Oracle deployment (surprisingly HP-UX is a strong contender in this space and many large corporations use HP-UX to run Oracle).

According to WimCoekaerts, Oracle's director of Linux engineering, Oracle's own production servers are rolled out with Linux -- not Solaris -- and Linux is now the de facto standard platform for 9,000 Oracle developers.

Sun is quick to point out the technical advantages of Solaris over Linux, and to be fair, they are numerous; score a point for Sun. What's more, Solaris is open source, just like Linux.

... ... ...

Sun says that, when you run the numbers, Red Hat's subscription pricing is expensive compared with what you get with a Solaris license. Oracle apparently agrees, because its baseline Linux support contract will be priced at half what Red Hat charges.

In short, whatever the effect Oracle's Unbreakable Linux has on Red Hat, it will also have a heavy impact on Sun.

[Oct 30, 2006] FAQ - Oracle Validated Configurations

For the list of systems (currently approximately a dozen) see Oracle Validated Configurations

August 14, 2006 Oracle Validated Configurations are pre-tested, validated architectures with software, hardware, storage and networking components together with documented best practices for deployment. Oracle and its strategic partners offer and recommend these configurations to enable end-users to deploy fully tested solutions to achieve standardization with high performance, scalability and reliability while lowering infrastructure costs.

... ... ....

Oracle is seeing significant end-user demand for Linux x86-64 architectures and is fully committed to developing, advancing and promoting the 64-bit commodity Linux. All new chipsets and servers are now being shipped with x86-64 architecture, thereby offering a much wider hardware selection to end-users than some of the other architectures. Therefore, Oracle has chosen to initially make Oracle Validated Configurations available on Linux x86-64.

[Oct 30, 2006] Oracle The biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of InfoWorld Column 2006-06-12 By Neil McAllister

Oracle is involved with Linux, Coekaerts says, foremost because Oracle uses Linux. A lot of Linux. Right now almost 10,000 Linux servers are in use internally at Oracle. Essentially, every production server at Oracle is a Linux server. In addition, about 9,000 developers at Oracle are using Linux to develop products.

A lot of that can be attributed to one simple factor: cost savings. "We use Linux for the same reason all the other companies are using Linux," Coekaerts says.

But there's more to it than that. The Oracle database is a large, complex application that places a lot of demands on the underlying OS. When Oracle wants to experiment, changing how the OS works to optimize database performance, it's easier to do with an open source, community-driven OS than a proprietary one. Hence the number of Linux kernel contributions from Oracle engineers; as a fast research and prototyping tool, Linux can't be beat.

The end result of all this in-house Linux experience is a whole lot of in-house expertise. In a way, then, it was only natural for Oracle to enter into the Linux support business. It's not widely recognized, but Oracle has provided enterprise Linux support through its Unbreakable Linux program for about four years. Now, with its new Oracle Validated Configurations initiative, it is poised to take that a step further.

An Oracle Validated Configuration is essentially what it sounds like. Oracle and its partners have selected specific combinations of hardware and software -- including server hardware, chip sets, Linux OSes, drivers, and storage -- and subjected them to approximately 60 to 70 tests designed to tax each system to the limits of its performance. The Validated label means you're getting a complete system that has been fully configured, certified, and optimized to run Oracle, down to specific kernel module parameters.

The Oracle stamp of approval doesn't just benefit Oracle users. Because Oracle is such a heavyweight application, it tends to highlight problems more quickly than other kinds of software. A system that runs Oracle well is almost guaranteed to run other applications well.

By comparison, Coekaerts says it typically takes customers nine to 12 months to get full server stacks properly configured when they do it themselves. "We're saving lots of people's time, including our own," he says.

But the bigger picture is one of perception. Over the long term, Coekaerts would like to see Oracle recognized for the contributions it has made to Linux throughout the years. As the world's second-largest software company, Oracle's influence over the industry isn't going away, but its reputation as an outsider in the world of open source just might.

"We're doing Linux the way we should be doing it," Coekaerts says. "We're trying to use our influence to do something good."

[Oct 28, 2006] Oracle Announces The Same Enterprise Class Support For Linux

On October 25, 2006 Oracle announced its own support for a clone of Red Hat. It is evident that Oracle will eat Red Hat lunch, but this is also a severe blow to Suse (making Novell almost irrelevant in enterprise Linux space). Some people think that this is a revenge for Jboss, but big business is not about retribution. Still details are pretty interesting and somewhat damaging for Solaris at mid-range: Sun should be very careful with licensing and cost of support to avoid the falloff...

Currently, Red Hat only provides bug fixes for the latest version of its software. This often requires customers to upgrade to a new version of Linux software to get a bug fixed. Oracle's new Unbreakable Linux program will provide bug fixes to future, current, and back releases of Linux. In other words, Oracle will provide the same level of enterprise support for Linux as is available for other operating systems.

Oracle is offering its Unbreakable Linux program for substantially less than Red Hat currently charges for its best support. "We believe that better support and lower support prices will speed the adoption of Linux, and we are working closely with our partners to make that happen," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. "Intel is a development partner. Dell and HP are resellers and support partners. Many others are signed up to help us move Linux up to mission critical status in the data center."

"Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program is available to all Linux users for as low as $99 per system per year," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "You do not have to be a user of Oracle software to qualify. This is all about broadening the success of Linux. To get Oracle support for Red Hat Linux all you have to do is point your Red Hat server to the Oracle network. The switch takes less than a minute."

"We think it's important not to fragment the market," said Oracle's Chief Corporate Architect Edward Screven. "We will maintain compatibility with Red Hat Linux. Every time Red Hat distributes a new version we will resynchronize with their code. All we add are bug fixes, which are immediately available to Red Hat and the rest of the community. We have years of Linux engineering experience. Several Oracle employees are Linux mainline maintainers."

[Sep 15, 2006] PostgreSQL Slammed by PHP Creator

BitUbique - Pumping Bits Everywhere - Starting with SQLite

SQLite is a small C library that implements a self-contained, embeddable, zero-configuration SQL database engine. The primary benefits of using SQLite is that you can create a self-contained database in your application.

What is so great about this? Well, for starters you can:

With SQLite, it is possible for you to distribute single application binary, with almost complete database and SQL querying capabilities. Compared to another embedded database such Berkeley DB, which offers just key and value assignment, SQLite is much more versatile and easy to use. You can just use all the SQL syntax that you have become familiar with to manipulate your data. The data itself is stored inside a single disk file on your local file-system, which can grow to a maximum of 2 terabytes (241 bytes) in size. For more information, visit SQLite site.

Under Ubuntu, to install SQLite, issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev libsqlite3-0 sqlite3-doc

Finnish Revenge as mySQL Gets Solid Support Open Source ZDNet.com

Oracle played a big card when it bought InnoDB, the most popular way to inject data into the open source mySQL database.

Monday mySQL responds by getting Solid� Information Technology, a proprietary database vendor, to take its solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL open source, under the GPL, starting in June.

Solid has its base in telecommunications and transaction processing, which had been considered a completely different market from the small fry mySQL supplies. It has 3 million copies out at places like Alcatel, Cisco, EMC, HP, NEC, Nokia, and Nortel.

The addition of Solid technology to mySQL, the company said, puts mySQL into the enterprise league and makes it a direct threat to Oracle.

But does it? After all, Solid is in that enterprise market, albeit a niche within it. Solid is not going away, and this is supposed to be a complementary deal.

So I talked to Paola Lubet, vice president of marketing for Solid, She told me her 14-year old company had been looking for a way into the broader enterprise market for some time, and sees open source as a "go to market" opportunity.

"Our decision at the moment is to go into the open source track and use mySQL as a channel. So we're going to make available code that works only with mySQL. On the side we have a proprietary line of products."

Going to open source with mySQL was also a comfortable decision for Solid. Both companies were founded in Finland, and still do most development there. The U.S. arms of both companies are in the same building in Cupertino.

Stacey Quandt, research director for the Aberdeen Group in Boston, told me the deal also opens new markets to mySQL. "For years mySQL has defined itself as not being a competitor (in the enterprise space), but with a transactional engine that gap can be narrowed," she said.

Web 2.0 projects built on mySQL can also move ahead with confidence they're ready as they move into transactions and as users "rush to the rail" to support them.

"There's more work to be done, but the gap is narrowing," Quandt said of mySQL. "What I would look for in terms of feature initiatives and measuring success is for mySQL to now get into telco and manufacturing and other verticals." And for Solid? "The network effects of open source may help them grow their installed base."

You might say that Oracle's open source problems are far from�Finnished.

[Apr 06, 2006] Oracle vs. PostgreSQL Users speak outBy Mark Brunelli, News Editor SearchOracle.com

A recent interview has DBAs talking about the merits of the open source PostgreSQL database management system (DBMS) as compared to Oracle � and their opinions truly run the gamut.

In that interview, Robert Treat and Jason Gilmore, co-authors of "Beginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8: From Novice to Professional," said that PostgreSQL 8.0 is much more than just a back end for Web sites. In many situations, the authors say, PostgreSQL can be used instead of or as a complement to Oracle and other DBMSs.

DBAs responding to the interview said they liked the low cost of the open source database, while others said that Oracle's rich feature set is second to none.

Jim Allen, a longtime Oracle professional and an independent technology consultant, says he has had considerable experience with PostgreSQL 7.4, but not the newest version, 8.1.

Allen believes that PostgreSQL is much more suitable for the casual database developer, such as Java developers who need a back end for [Java Database Connectivity] access.

"PostgreSQL has a solid set of features now that includes most if not all of what these developers would ever use," Allen said. "Oracle has a feature set several orders of magnitude more rich, but few if any of these features would ever be used by this group."

Another thing Allen likes about PostgreSQL is the fact that the stored procedure compilation is transactional.

"You can recompile a stored procedure on a live system, and only transactions starting after that compilation will see the changes," he said. "Transactions in process can complete with the old version. Oracle just blocks on the busy procedure."

Matt S., a DBA, said that he has successfully used PostgreSQL 8 in conjunction with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and 2005, as well as with Oracle 10g.

"I was impressed thoroughly with the ease of implementation, as well as compatibility and installation of PostgreSQL, considering its open source nature," he said. "Using it in enterprise applications [and] Web site situations was relatively painless [and] a simplified security structure made it very appealing."

Another user, who did not want to be identified, said that it makes more sense to compare PostgreSQL to OracleXE, a slimmed down and free version of the Oracle DBMS. The user said that like PostgreSQL, OracleXE is easy to install and use. He added that OracleXE includes Apex/HTMLDB to help developers quickly build and deploy Web applications.

"I've used PostgreSQL in the past [and] it is fine," the user wrote. "However, Oracle is stepping up and making a pretty good product and making it easier for organizations to upgrade their database systems down the road from the free version to their other versions of their product."

More on this topic:

Why PostgreSQL can best SQLServer, Oracle

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle or other?

Richard Goulet, a senior Oracle DBA with a New England-area power components manufacturer, said that he uses Oracle and PostgreSQL side-by-side for numerous tasks.

Goulet agrees that PostgreSQL is easy to use, and he says it complies with the SQL standard nicely. He adds that there is plenty of support readily available for PostgreSQL through numerous mailing lists. But that's where Goulet's fondness for the open source software ends.

PostgreSQL doesn't behave as nicely as Oracle when the system fills up, Goulet said. In those instances, the system tends to crash quickly.

Goulet said that setting up a TCP/IP connection capability with PostgreSQL is hardly an intuitive process. To do it, he says, one needs to modify the postgres.conf and pg_hba.conf files manually.

"The last big thing between PostgreSQL and Oracle that's really missing is a gateway product from Oracle. These two don't talk to each other except by externally built and most times [highly customized] connectors," Goulet said. "An Oracle gateway to PostgreSQL would mean a lot to those who use both products happily."

Josh Berkus, who works with the PostgreSQL Project Core Team, said there are in fact third party tools available on the Web which help integrate Oracle and PostgreSQL data. They include Ora2pg and DBI-Link, he said.

[Mar 14, 2006] Five reasons why you should never use PostgreSQL -- ever By W. Jason Gilmore SearchOpenSource.com |

Within the past two years, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft have all released freely available versions of their flagship database servers, a move that would have been unheard of just a few years ago. While their respective representatives would argue the move was made in order to better accommodate the needs of all users, it's fairly clear that continued pressure from open source alternatives such as MySQL and PostgreSQL have caused these database juggernauts to rethink their strategies within this increasingly competitive market.

While PostgreSQL's adoption rate continues to accelerate, some folks wonder why that rate isn't even steeper given its impressive array of features. One can speculate that many of the reasons for not considering its adoption tend to be based on either outdated or misinformed sources.

In an effort to dispel some of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) surrounding this impressive product, instead, I'll put forth several of the most commonplace reasons companies have for not investigating PostgreSQL further.

Reason #1: It doesn't run on Windows

PostgreSQL has long supported every modern Unix-compatible operating system, and ports are also available for Novell NetWare and OS/2. With the 8.0 release, PostgreSQL's support for all mainstream operating systems was complete, as it included a native Windows port.

Now, you can install the PostgreSQL database on a workstation or laptop with relative ease, thank to an installation wizard similar to that used for installing Microsoft Word or Quicken.

Reason #2: No professional development and administration tools

Most users who are unfamiliar with open source projects tend to think DB administrators manage them entirely through a series of cryptic shell commands. Indeed, while PostgreSQL takes advantage of the powerful command-line environment, there are a number of graphical-based tools available for carrying out tasks such as administration and database design.

The following list summarizes just a few of the tools available to PostgreSQL developers:

Reason #3: PostgreSQL doesn't support my language

Proprietary vendors' free databases:
Database heavyweights IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have all recently released free versions of their products. More information about the respective products can be found by navigating to the following links:

Today's enterprise often relies on an assortment of programming languages, and if the sheer number of PostgreSQL API contributions available are any indication, the database is being used in all manner of environments.

The following links point to PostgreSQL interfaces for today's most commonly used languages: C++, C#, JDBC, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl.

Interfaces even exist for some rather unexpected languages, with Ada, Common Lisp and Pascal all coming to mind.

Reason #4: There's nobody to blame when something goes wrong

The misconception that open source projects lack technical support options is curious, particularly if one's definition of support does not involve simply having somebody to blame when something goes wrong.

You can find the answers to a vast number of support questions in the official PostgreSQL manual, which consists of almost 1,450 pages of detailed documentation regarding every aspect of the database, ranging from a synopsis of supported data types to system internals.

The documentation is available for online perusal and downloading in PDF format. For more help, there are a number of newsgroups accessible through Google groups, with topics ranging across performance, administration, SQL construction, development and general matters.

If you're looking for a somewhat more immediate response, hundreds of PostgreSQL devotees can be found logged into IRC (irc.freenode.net #postgresql?).

You can plug in to IRC chat clients for all common operating systems (Windows included) at any given moment. For instance, on a recent Wednesday evening, there were more than 240 individuals logged into the channel. Waking up the next morning, I found more than 252 logged in, including a few well-known experts in the community. The conversation topics ranged from helping newcomers get logged into their PostgreSQL installation for the first time to advanced decision tree generation algorithms. Everyone is invited to participate and ask questions no matter how simplistic or advanced.

For those users more comfortable with a more formalized support environment, other options exist. CommandPrompt Inc.'s PostgreSQL packages range from one-time incident support to 24x7 Web, e-mail and phone coverage. Recently, Pervasive Software Inc. jumped into the fray, offering various support packages in addition to consulting services. Open source services support company SpikeSource Inc. announced PostgreSQL support last summer, along with integration of the database into its SpikeSource Core Stack.

Reason #5: You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for

To put it simply, if you require a SQL standards-compliant database with all of the features found in any enterprise-class product and capable of storing terabytes of data while efficiently operating under heavy duress, chances are PostgreSQL will quite satisfactorily meet your needs. However, it doesn't come packaged in a nice box, nor will a sales representative stand outside your bedroom window after you download it.

For applications that require Oracle to even function properly, consider EnterpriseDB, a version of PostgreSQL, which has reimplemented features such as data types, triggers, views and cursors that copy Oracle's behavior. Just think of all the extra company coffee mugs you could purchase with the savings.

Computerworld Users tempted by free commercial databases

... Using the open-standard JDBC interface, Savvica ported its data to DB2 Express-C from MySQL in less than a day, said Green.

Defections such as Savvica's hearten big commercial database vendors, including Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and even Sybase, which have all released free "express" databases in the past six months.

Despite more robust features, these hugely profitable databases have in recent years lost mind share -- and, increasingly, customers -- to their open-source counterparts. MySQL AB's success has epitomized the corporate revolt against the license and support fees charged for commercial databases.

But the free express databases are "significantly challenging the conventional wisdom about commercial vs. open-source databases," said Peter O'Kelly, an analyst at Burton Group.

The commercial database vendors are opening a second front by adding support for application frameworks popular with open-source users. On Tuesday, Zend Technologies released software that enables developers to write applications interacting with the Oracle database in the PHP scripting language.

"IBM and Oracle are doing something similar to what MySQL has done: win the hearts and minds of developers by giving them easier access to technologies," said Mike Pinette, Zend's vice president of business development.

It's early, and the success of the big commercial database vendors at wooing back software developers -- who wield increasing influence over corporate buying decisions -- is not yet clear.

In the area of database instructional book sales, considered a good indicator of developer interest, sales of SQL Server how-to books have surpassed MySQL books this year, according to Roger Magoulis, director of research at leading publisher, O'Reilly Media. He believes that interest is due more to the general release of SQL Server 2005 last fall, rather than just its free edition -- especially as sales of Oracle or DB2 how-to books have not increased significantly since the release of their free versions.

Sybase says its Adaptive Server Enterprise 15 express edition has been downloaded 45,000 times since its September release, with "a lot of that converting into business," according to Marty Beard, Sybase's senior vice president of corporate development and marketing.

Microsoft, which released its first free database, MSDE, back in 1999, did not immediately provide the number of downloads of SQL Server 2005 Express, which was released last October. But Oracle said hundreds of thousands of developers and students have downloaded Oracle XE since its beta release that same month. IBM's DB2 Express-C was made generally available only in late January.

In contrast, the latest 5.0 version of MySQL has been downloaded more than 6 million times since October, said Zack Urlocker, vice president of marketing at the Cupertino, Calif.-based firm. "Sure, the express versions are free, but they come with very significant limitations, especially the lack of support," Urlocker said. "No enterprise customer will go into production with a database that cannot be supported."

MySQL user Andy Meadows said he hasn't been tempted to switch.

"Unless it's a large CRM or identity management system, I've found MySQL to be robust and scalable enough," said Meadows, president of Live Oak Interactive Inc., an Austin-based Web development and hosting firm. And while he acknowledges that "you can do quite a bit within the parameters" of the express databases, he fears that vendors will pressure him to upgrade to an expensive supported version of their database.

Rajeev Kaula, a professor in Missouri State University's information systems department, said Oracle XE is easier to install than earlier "lite" Oracle databases and helps teach students to program more efficiently.

"Students who honed their skills on MySQL and PHP tend to treat databases only as a way of storing tables," Kaula said. Learning on Oracle XE, "they are realizing the power of transferring the business logic to the database itself."

[Feb 28, 2006] This Oracle Database Wants to Be Free

The company has taken its Database 10g Express Edition (XE), a stripped-down, free version of its flagship database software, to general availability.

XE is exiting beta mode, where it received strong global support from several hundred thousand Java, .NET, PHP and Web developers and students.

Programmers use it to write database applications on Windows and Linux platforms, Oracle said in a statement.

For example, Oracle said Missouri State University computer science students use XE in their classes to get a better feel for the Oracle database through procedures, functions and triggers.

The software is built on the same code base as Oracle Database 10g Release 2 and is compatible with all of Oracle's database family of products. Oracle intended XE to have a simple upgrade path for users who wish to upgrade and get the bells and whistles associated with Database 10g standard and enterprise editions.

Database XE is available now on 32-bit Windows and a slew of Linux operating systems: Debian, Mandriva Linux 2006 Power Pack+, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and SUSE Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Red Hat Fedora and Ubuntu.

The software can be downloaded for free here.

[Nov 10, 2005] O'Reilly Network Using Perl in PostgreSQL by Andrew Dunstan

Most Perl users are familiar with using Perl to talk to databases. Perl's DBI is, along with ODBC and JDBC, one of the most common and widely ported database client interfaces. The DBI driver for PostgreSQL, DBD::Pg, is very well-maintained, and quite featureful. For example, it recently acquired proper support for prepared statements. Previously, the client library had emulated these, but with the latest DBD::Pg and PostgreSQL distributions, you can get real prepared queries, which can lead to big performance gains in some cases.

However, there is another way of using Perl with PostgreSQL--writing little Perl programs that actually execute inside of the server. This way of using Perl is less well known than using the DBI driver, and is, as far as I know, unique to PostgreSQL. It lets you do some very cool things that you just can't do in the client.

[Nov 7, 2005] Open Resource InfoWorld CA spins off Ingres. Does anyone care By Dave Rosenberg. See also the Wikipedia article about Ingress Ingres - Wikipedia

CA is selling its Ingres database technology to private equity firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital, which is forming a new company to develop and market the open-source software.

Does anyone care? Where will Ingres get it's market share from? Enterprise DB is sort of a different animal and MySQL has such a huge user base it doesn't seem like a great business move to launch yet another open source RDBMS database...especially when Ingres isn't widely adopted in the enterprise and doesn't have a niche that will get it in the door. Maybe I am missing something?

At last years LinuxWorld I moderated panel of open source database company executives, including a guy from CA who unfortunately became the target for everyone, especially me, to attack. That was largely based on the fact that CA was treating it as some noble offering to the community. But I still think Ingres is an also-ran product without a big market.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on November 7, 2005 11:02 AM | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I disagree with your comments. Being the original database and enhanced to the level it is Ingres is the most advance database in the market. It has a large customer base who are loyal to Ingres. Running a small website is fine one can use MySQL or anything else for that, but if you are doing something serious, uou need a database which is as serious as Ingres.

Ingres scales really well, has great backup and recovery, can work on multiple platforms, installs in a flash and the best part is that with Ingres being such a mature product you do not have to worry about stability of the system.

MySQL 5 is just coming out with some very important database features which Ingres has had for years.

Ingres is the "real" database at fraction of the cost of Oracle, but languished due to lack of promotion. With G&H pumping in so much resources on it, I believe it can be the best out there leaving MySQL far behind.

freshmeat.net Project details for Cascade

Cascade is a Web-based content management system. It's based around the idea of organizing resources into a hierachy of categories, much like Yahoo. Some features include generating static or dynamic HTML, allowing user comments on ratings on resources, design abstraction through templates, suggested addition and update management, an auto-generated "What's New" page, support for related categories and virtual subcategories, and more. It can use Postgres or MySQL as its SQL database.

freshmeat.net Project details for Postgresql AutoDoc

Postgresql AutoDoc has the ability to output XML, which can be loaded into Dia to create a UML diagram of the database (complete with table relations and descriptive information), an HTML form for further detailed information, GraphViz .dot output, and Docbook 4.1 style SGML for inclusion with project documentation as an appendix. It works on any 7.x PostgreSQL-based database.

freshmeat.net Project details for libsite-db-perl

The libsite-db-perl module provides basic and easy database-connectivity through both URLs (like 'postgres://user:password@myhost/mydatabase') and standard DBD-parameters. This method should be useful for both beginners and experts since it decreases the duplication of code and its nice URL-based access.

freshmeat.net Project details for AllCommerce

AllCommerce is an e-commerce/content application based on Perl and SQL92 databases which runs under Unix/Linux/Win2000 using SQL database engines (MySQL/Postgres/etc). In addition to a shopping cart, it provides tools for content, merchandise, statistics, vendor, order, and inventory. Its modular design allows it to be used as a complete or partial solution.

freshmeat.net Project details for dSQL

dSQL is an SQL query tool for MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, MS- SQL, ODBC drivers, and all supported Perl DBI drivers. It uses Glade and GTK-Perl.

Enterprise Systems India Shines in CA's $1 Million Programming Challenge

At last summer's Linux World expo, Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) unveiled plans to open up the source code to its Ingres R/3 database.

Ingres is used by thousands of customers, but (these days) it's far from a relational-database powerhouse. With this in mind, CA sought to sweeten the pot, announcing a total of $1 million in prizes to encourage programmers to develop open-source tools to migrate applications and data from DB2, Oracle, and other databases to Ingres R/3.

Last week, CA announced the results of its Ingres challenge. The winners were determined by a panel that included Robin Bloor (of consultancy Hurwitz and Associates), JBoss architect Gavin King, and Ingres founder Dr. Michael Stonebraker. Qualifying entries had to ensure that applications running on Oracle, IBM, and other databases could interoperate unmodified with Ingres.

By all accounts, the winning entries-called Shift2Ingres, EzyMigrate, and DbConverter-do so splendidly. What's more, they also amount to a victory of sorts for the Indian subcontinent. Two of the three winning entries were submitted by programming teams based in India (New Delhi and Kerala, respectively). The third, for the record, was written by Bipin Prasad, a programmer from New York.

Shift2Ingres, which took home the biggest prize ($400,000) is a schema-, data-, and application-migration toolset for Oracle. It's based on a Java GUI that lets DBAs configure and perform the migration of tables and underlying data, views, grants, sequences, PL/SQL procedures and functions, triggers and other schema objects from Oracle to Ingres r3 databases.

EzyMigrate, one of the two $300,000 winners, is a database-migration tool for SQL Server. It uses ODBC to connect to discover database tables resident in SQL Server and displays table definitions to end users by means of a Web-based front end. DBAs can use the interface to make modifications to the table definitions, and the tool itself creates and populates the tables in the target database. DBAs can use EzyMigrate to selectively perform individual table migrations, but the tool also provides models for several different data migration scenarios, including drop-and-replace, delete-and-replace, and append.

The final winner, DbConverter, also took home a $300,000 purse. The database-migration program can convert tables, views, synonyms, indexes, triggers, constraints, groups, roles, users, permissions, sequences and other schema components from MySQL. DbConverter uses a Java-based UI that lets DBAs select not just which components they want to use for a migration, but also what kind of migration they want to perform-e.g., directly into the target database or by means of generating a SQL script and relevant output files so they can perform the migration externally. The tool also supports plug-ins that can be written to parse and convert associated applications.

Techworld.com - Oracle jumps on PHP bandwagon

"Oracle is the latest database vendor to put its weight behind the PHP scripting language for business, with a new tool that integrates PHP applications with its databases.

"Oracle and PHP tool developer Zend Technologies have developed a PHP engine called Zend Core for Oracle. The tool, to be released for free in the summer, will integrate Oracle's databases and Zend's PHP environment..."

NewsForge Database vendors are joining the open source party

Oracle: Open source hucksters and challenge

Oracle Vice President of Technology Marketing Robert Shimp, whose company is among the only database providers not trending toward open source in some way, was critical of some open source moves by database makers in an interview with NewsForge. Shimp did not name names, but he noted that while Oracle welcomes the market growth and competition from open source databases, much of the open source database noise is centered on "orphanware."

Shimp cites companies "using open source because they see it as a marketing mechanism -- a tool for creating hype or awareness of older products. This is 'orphanware' -- software they want to abandon that has no real commercial value, so they put it out and see what happens."

Shimp elaborated by dividing open source database strategies into two categories: "serious" open source databases that provide transparency, allowing developers and users to learn and share; and the "hucksters" putting out abandonware.

In terms of competition from open source, Shimp said Oracle views the other databases as an asset in bringing new database users to the market, calling Oracle's biggest competitor the filing cabinet. Quite often, users are introduced to databases through a free or open source database, then move to Oracle as their needs become greater, according to Shimp, who called innovation Oracle's challenge and advantage.

"I'm confident we'll be able to create cool things that will get people to use Oracle," he said. "But I love the challenge the open source guys are providing."

IBM: Seeding the market

IBM program manager Les King, who touted Big Blue's move to open its Cloudscape database through the Apache incubator project Derby, said he took exception to the idea that Cloudscape was a case of abandonware. "It had a very thriving life on its own before we decided to open source it," King said.

He also indicated that like Oracle, IBM sees open source as a way to gain more market share by catering to developers with open source databases.

"There is an opportunity for vendors offering base code to hopefully seed their own market," King said. "Certainly, if we consider the seeding play, you need something to seed and Derby is perfectly set up to start seeding DB2 Express."

While there is talk of IBM open sourcing parts of its full-featured, enterprise-class DB2, King discounted the idea, referring to the complexity and value of the code.

"If you take the multiple millions of lines of code [in DB2], it naturally doesn't lend itself to dumping all of that code out there," King said. "In addition, today, there is a lot of intellectual property in the software we sell, and we wouldn't want to make it all open source."

King did anticipate more open source moves from more database players, however.

"I think you'll start to see more choice as companies do take pieces of software and make it open source because that's what they're targeting," King said, referring to developers. "It doesn't seem to be slowing."

IBM and Oracle say they are happy to see open source bring new users to the overall database market, but OS database players say that their users prefer to stick with open source, which is now rivaling DB2 and Oracle, even at the higher level.

CA: Commodity competition

Computer Associates Senior Vice President of Development Tony Gaughan referred to a sort of seeding, indicating his company -- which this year released its Ingres database under its own Trusted Open Source License, sees open source as a chance to increase mindshare and foster innovation by collaborating with its community.

Gaughan, who said the Ingres open sourcing is a return to the database's "roots" as an open source project at UC Berkeley, also pointed to the database as another instance of commoditization.

"Customers do not set out to buy a database, they purchase an application that requires a database," Gaughan said.

"We have seen a need and demand for an enterprise-class, open source database solution," Gaughan said. "MySQL is suited to read-only operations and serving up HTML content; PostgreSQL has a much richer feature set but has scalability problems and doesn't have a company behind it providing enterprise-level support; Ingres has a mature, proven, scalable transactional database, and includes clustering, peer-to-peer replication, and distributed query support."

In response to calls that the CA Trusted Open Source License is not OSI-approved and the Ingres moves are half-hearted, Gaughan said the elements not included in the available source were B1 security and the spatial object library for the database, which CA does not own.

"The security component that was removed was B1 security, which is a level of security used exclusively in situations of national security and is only available on B1 secure operating systems such as Sun CMW," Gaughan said. He added CA is working on a new 3-D, OpenGIS-compliant spatial object solution the company plans to develop with its community.

PostgreSQL: Others are too little too late

PostgreSQL core team member Josh Berkus said the open source moves by other companies are both a marketing play and done for technical reasons.

"I think that recent events in databases have vindicated the idea that open source will continue to spread through the software world, annexing one sector at a time," Berkus said in an email. "It's not a question of if software companies will need an open source strategy, but when."

While it might have been a competitive concern if Sybase and CA were making Linux and open source moves three years ago, Berkus indicated it is now the larger, older companies that are at risk from open source progress.

"My feeling is that both of these are good examples of proprietary software companies worried about being left behind by open source," Berkus said.

Berkus said databases are a likely part of the software stack to go open source because they are infrastructure software, making it easier to attract developers. However, Berkus questioned whether Sybase or CA could reap the same benefits as would a database that was born open source or free.

"In the case of CA, I'm going to reserve judgment until its license is approved by the Open Source Institute," Berkus said. "Right now, it looks like more PR than substance; unlike IBM, CA has not made Ingres separate from CA product management, which means that they're rather unlikely to attract developers. Compare the failure of both Borland's Interbase and SAP's SAP-DB as open source projects -- no offense to Firebird DB, which became a dynamic project after they forked it away from Borland. CA seems to be repeating the same mistakes."

As for Sybase, Berkus said the likely reason the competitor released the free version for Linux was a Software Development Magazine survey, which suggested PostgreSQL was pushing Sybase out of the market. Sybase did not respond to that contention.

Berkus said regardless of what other vendors are doing, the open source databases are catching up and in some instances surpassing the proprietary competition.

"PostgreSQL and even MySQL have surpassed Sybase in several areas, even if we lag behind in others," Berkus said. "PostgreSQL is particularly a threat to Sybase because our very robust, fully ACID transaction support, high availability, and support for custom statistical functions and complex queries make PostgreSQL perfectly suitable for a variety of financial applications."

MySQL: Everyone wants to be a toy

For MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, the free and open source database cavalcade from the old veterans is welcome news, and a validation that open source databases are now competing at the highest levels.

"We think it is good news for users, and we welcome these products to the open source world, Ingres, and the Linux world, Sybase," Mickos said. "We have predicted for some time that this would happen. It validates the MySQL business model. Two years ago, people said MySQL was a toy. Now, apparently everyone wants to be a toy!"

Mickos said the open source trend among databases is because of a combination of things, and is also, "a typical reaction from a large company that would like an older product to become more popular."

"Some years ago, Borland did the same thing with Interbase, and later they withdrew from the open source world," Mickos said.

However, the MySQL chief did refer to the MaxDB database, formerly known as SAP DB, as an example of older, closed code that was successfully nurtured with open source.

"MaxDB may be the only DBMS that started as closed source and was later successfully open sourced," Mickos said. "SAP AG open sourced it some years ago, and today, our company is the open source and commercial channel for MaxDB. It is a very robust, enterprise-level database and it powers an increasing number of SAP R/3 applications all over the world. It is also being used more and more by cost-conscious enterprises, by government agencies, and in developing economies. So here you have a great example that a DBMS with a long history can indeed enjoy new growth."

Sybase: Sidestepping corporate approval

While it has not released its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) database as open source, Sybase has scored success with the free Linux version of its database. Citing the same database stepping stone theory as others, Sybase Senior Group Marketing Manager Amit Satoor said companies are struggling with the switch from free and open source databases to enterprise-class databases.

"Most of the customers just want low-cost access to software so they can start projects that they can deploy on a scalable platform," Satoor said.

Sybase sought to strengthen its Linux database recently with the announcement that its ASE database would run on IBM's eServer OpenPower server, a prominent Linux deployment based on the Power 5 processor.

Sleepycat: Feeling pressure from open source

Berkeley DB open source database maker Sleepycat Software's Vice President of Marketing Rex Wang said moves by Sybase, CA, and IBM were the older players' reactions to inroads from the open source newcomers.

"There's no doubt that these proprietary database vendors are being pressured to do this by the success of open source vendors," Wang said, referring to a Sybase statement that the free Linux ASE was intended to compete directly with the open source databases, as well as DB2 and Oracle. "The fact that large, incumbent, proprietary players have been motivated to make these moves indicates that the momentum is real."

Wang said Sybase, for example, felt tremendous price pressure and therefore made a restricted version of its product free to the most price-sensitive segment of its market. "Their hope is to get people to try it for free, then sell them the unrestricted version as they scale their use," he said.

But not so fast, Wang indicated, as Berkeley DB's developer focus and relative maturity -- in the market for eight years -- mean it is already appropriate for mission-critical use.

Open source getting good enough

Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner said the use of a free Linux or open source database to introduce customers to a wider range of products that scale up to enterprise is a legitimate strategy. However, Gardner also said the databases that have been open source since the start may benefit from an evolving, total open source solution.

"What will be interesting is if the full stack of open source components becomes some kind of de facto standard," Gardner said. "In a best-of-breed open source approach, what are the databases that are part of that de facto standard?"

Gardner added that while he does not see open source databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL dethroning the dominant Oracle and DB2 databases, the capabilities of the open source databases are quickly catching up and are also sufficient for many higher-level users.

"MySQL and PostreSQL -- those are quite full-featured," Gardner said. "If they continue that trajectory, good enough is good enough for many people."

FutureSQL Web Database Administration Tool

FutureSQL is a Rapid Application Development web database administration tool written in Perl. FutureSQL allows one to easily setup config files to view, edit, delete and otherwise process records from a MySQL database. It uses a data dictionary, configuration files and html templates, and allows "pre-processing" and "post-processing" on both fields, records and operations. It allows multiple views and operations on a data set, including the use of joined tables for queries and reports.

A demo application with most of the features is included.

[Aug 12, 2004] Open source making its mark

By Robert Westervelt, News Writer
12 Aug 2004 | SearchDatabase.com

Oracle, Microsoft and IBM will respond to a flood of interest in open source databases by slashing prices and ramping up automation features, according to "DBMS: Foundation of application Infrastructure," a market report issued by Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.

Proprietary database management system (DBMS) vendors are beginning to feel the pinch from MySQL, Computer Associates International Inc.'s Ingres and other open source DBMS vendors that are attracting new customers with a low cost, no-frills systems.

"Right now we're seeing the impact of open source databases in the entry-level database arena," said Noel Yuhanna, a senior analyst at Forrester. "As open source vendors add new features and functionality, the adoption rate [of open source databases] will increase."

While more than 80% of enterprises continue to focus on the top-tier DBMS products -- such as Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Oracle -- for mission-critical database applications, open source products are accounting for more low-end, small scale deployments, according to the Forrester report.

Most of the open source DBMS deployments are for non-mission-critical applications, but Forrester predicts that more than 20% of overall deployments will be mission-critical by 2006.

Forrester surveyed DBAs, chief information officers and other IT personnel at 85 North American firms that use or plan to use open source software. Of those, 52% said that they use or plan to use MySQL DBMS. Those surveyed said they were lured by low cost of support and maintenance, low acquisition costs and easier integration with customized software.

"Open source is clearly making a dent in database low-end deployments today," Yuhanna said. "I expect larger scale deployments in the near future."

For now companies are downloading the free open source versions, initially to test out the functionality in their specific environment, Yuhanna said. Once enterprises get through the initial stages of their testing models, most will make the switch to the fully supported version.

"Enterprises that are serious about open source will purchase the supported version," Yuhanna said.

MySQL is the leader in open source systems, but CA announced plans in May to open up the source code to its Ingres DBMS. In addition, CA said last week it would offer $1 million to encourage development of an open source database migration toolkit.

"We're seeing very good comments about Ingres in terms of performance, scalability and feature sets," Yuhanna said. "It's definitely going to be an important open source database and will compete on the deployment adoption rate with MySQL."

Meanwhile, IBM is also jumping on board, announcing recently that it would contribute its Cloudscape Java database, which it acquired from Informix, to the Apache Software Foundation. The project is called "Derby," and amounts to more than 500,000 lines of Java code.

While open source databases begin to take more market share, Forrester said it is seeing increased interest in mobile and XML databases. A Sybase subsidiary, iAnywhere Solutions Inc. dominates the mobile space with more than 65% of the market.

XML-enabled databases supported by Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft also continue to grow, according to Forrester. The current market size is about $250 million and is likely to grow to $400 million by 2007, Forrester said.

[Aug 12, 2004] NewsForge What's to come in the (Linux) software market

By: Michael Dortch, Robert Frances Group

The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco last week featured many interesting announcements. However, the show was at least as noteworthy for its implications as for its actual news announcements. IBM Corp.'s announced transformation of its Cloudscape database solution into an Open Source offering follows closely the announcement of a similar transformation for Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA)'s Ingres database solution. Between Cloudscape and Ingres, Open Source developers now have multiple new and powerful options for building more "enterprise-class" solutions.

CA also announced actual availability of Ingres r3 as an Open Source offering. The company also announced a million-dollar challenge/inducement to developers who build tools that help users migrate to Ingres from other proprietary and Open Source database solutions.

Other software vendors announced, discussed, and/or failed to deny or dispute rumored plans to transform other proprietary solutions into Open Source offerings. Clearly, the typing is on the display for many of these vendors. They understand that they need to deliver Open Source complements and alternatives to their proprietary solutions, or complements and alternatives priced like Open Source offerings, to remain competitive. No IT executive desirous of continued employment is going to be able to justify paying proprietary-level prices for applications without strongly compelling value propositions, when supporting operating environments become increasingly cheap or free.

But no IT executive similarly incented is going to argue to "rip and replace" all proprietary solutions with Open Source alternatives. The enterprise software market, therefore, looks more and more like a striated, multi-tiered arena, analogous in some ways to the current market for broadcast content.

Today, there is "free" broadcast content subsidized rather speculatively by advertising, the effectiveness of which is impossible to track perfectly. There is partly subsidized content, paid for by combinations of grants and subscriptions paid for by only a portion of all consumers. Finally, there is completely subsidized content, for which consumers pay via subscriptions or per use.

Soon, there are likely to be three similar tiers of the enterprise software market. There will be free software, offered in the hopes that it will generate follow-on demand for fee-based enhancements, services, and/or support. There will be proprietary software, priced, sold, and supported much as it is today. In addition, there will likely be a rapidly growing middle tier of enterprise software solutions that are priced aggressively and built atop free and inexpensive Open Source foundations, including but not limited to Linux.

This likely means expanded choices for developers and enterprises alike. However, environments made up of various combinations of solutions from all three tiers will definitely require comprehensive, integrated management. A key question is, therefore, from what vendors will such management solutions come?

The ability of the leading traditional IT management vendors to answer this question apparently varies widely. BMC Software, Inc., which won a Best of Show award at LinuxWorld in 2003, announced no new solutions or reaffirmations of its commitment to Linux support in San Francisco last week. This is in marked contrast to CA, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), and IBM. CA, in addition to the announcements discussed above, has repeatedly stated publicly that it is encouraging eventual development of an entire Open Source IT management suite. Regarding HP and IBM, there were no specific HP OpenView or IBM Tivoli announcements at LinuxWorld. However, both HP and IBM were prominent at the show, and very willing to discuss how their respective management arms are committed to making Linux and Open Source solutions safe bets for the enterprise.

Veritas Software Corp. , a vendor known primarily for storage management, reminded LinuxWorld Expo attendees that it had been shipping Linux solutions since 1999. The company also reinforced its new position as a provider of solutions intended to enable utility computing. Veritas also announced offerings intended to enable rapid migration between Linux and other environments, and that it had joined the Open Software Development Labs, Inc.

Veritas is transforming and expanding its core mission by focusing specifically on making enterprise IT architectures ready for Linux and Open Source solutions. IT executives should expect to hear lots of other vendors tout similar strategies - and be prepared to carefully separate promise from reality.

RFG believes IT management solution vendors must quickly and firmly declare and demonstrate willingness and ability to help IT executives build and operate infrastructures that embrace Linux and Open Source. Furthermore, IT executives should work with their most trusted vendors to ensure that architectures at those executives' enterprises become and remain sufficiently flexible and elastic to support promising new Open Source solutions as they appear. Such architectures will enable IT executives to incorporate such solutions as they demonstrate the ability to lower costs and deliver other business benefits, without disrupting operations or enterprise elasticity.

Meanwhile, IT executives should ensure that their leading incumbent management vendors have strategies and offerings adequate to address growing enterprise Linux and Open Source support requirements - or begin considering alternative solutions and vendors.

=====

Michael Dortch is a principal business analyst and the IT infrastructure management practice leader at Robert Frances Group (RFG). RFG provides business-centric, timely advice, consulting, and research about the IT marketplace to Global 2000 IT executives, their teams, and their senior executive colleagues. More information is available online at http://www.rfgonline.com

Database Pipeline Do Open Source Databases Pack The Gear By Rick Whiting Courtesy


Information Week

Open-source databases took a giant step toward the mainstream last month when Hewlett-Packard began supporting MySQL and certifying it to run on HP servers--the first major system vendor to do so.

HP's move adds to the growing evidence that open-source databases--primarily MySQL--are becoming a viable alternative to commercial databases from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. "It's no longer the lunatic fringe," says Gartner analyst Kevin Strange, who has seen a surge of interest in MySQL in the last six to eight months.

Like the open-source Linux operating system and Apache Web server, open-source databases are freely available on the Web, and developers can download the source code and modify it any way they like. But companies also can pay vendors such as MySQL AB and PostgreSQL Inc. for support and other services in the same way they can purchase Linux software and support from Red Hat Inc.

Why the sudden interest in open-source databases? Cost is the main reason. Companies are undertaking new IT projects as the economy improves, but budgets remain tight and IT managers are increasingly open to low-cost alternatives to high-priced database software. MySQL implementation costs can be as little as 10% or 20% the cost of a commercial database, says Mike Gaydos, the lead architect of MySQL solutions at IT services firm EDS.

Business-technology executives now have a higher comfort level with open-source software overall. As Linux, Apache, and the JBoss open-source application server gain acceptance, IT execs who just a year ago might have balked at the idea of using an open-source database are taking a second look.

Open-source databases lack some of the sophisticated capabilities offered by commercial databases, but they're widely perceived as capable of handling routine and even critical computing tasks. AMR Research, in a report predicting open-source databases will be widely adopted by 2006, found that 43% of companies using open-source databases say they can handle mission-critical jobs today, while 37% expect them to be ready for such tasks within 24 months.

Increased use of MySQL and other open-source databases, in fact, represents something of a revolt among IT buyers against IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, which continue to fill their database products with new features and technology that many business users aren't ready to use. Oracle, for example, built grid-computing capabilities into its 10g database, even though many customers are a long way from building grid systems.

The government of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, is swapping out its Windows server software for Linux. It uses MySQL for several database applications and plans to convert others to MySQL from Microsoft's SQL Server database. Aside from the cost advantage MySQL has over SQL Server, county IT director Thomas Broniecki claims MySQL is more secure than Microsoft's database.

Few companies, however, are ripping out their Oracle, Microsoft, or IBM DB2 databases in favor of open-source databases. Commercial databases are too entrenched within IT networks, and businesses have too much invested in applications--either developed in-house or packaged apps from PeopleSoft, SAP, and others--that run on those databases.

Open-source databases move in most often for new, custom-built applications, particularly within small and midsize companies, educational institutions, and government organizations.

"Pretty much every part of the business runs on MySQL," says Corey Ostman, technology VP at PriceGrabber.com LLC, an online comparison-shopping Web site. The database serves up content to the Web site, which gets thousands of hits every second during peak times, and tallies up the clickstream data used to calculate fees paid by retailers to PriceGrabber.

PriceGrabber chose MySQL when the company was started in 1999 because the database was easy to manage, Ostman says. He had worked with Oracle's database and says it needed constant attention and tuning. And while cost wasn't a major factor in the initial decision to use MySQL, Ostman says it doesn't hurt that its maintenance and support from MySQL AB costs "thousands of dollars per year rather than [the] hundreds of thousands of dollars per year" a commercial database would cost.

MySQL finds its way into some big companies. Sabre Holding Corp. has 45 Linux-based servers running MySQL databases to give travel agencies fare and seat-availability information. But the heavy-duty job of calculating prices and processing reservations remains on an HP NonStop transactional database.

While the roster of open-source databases includes PostgreSQL and Berkeley DB, the momentum is rolling in favor of MySQL, which has more than 4 million installations.

Doug's Impromptu Survey

A customizable online survey using Perl, Apache, and MySQL.

Some new scripts:

O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2002

Brian Aker, OSDN

Track: Databases
Date: Friday, July 26
Time: 1:45pm - 2:30pm
Location: Grande Ballroom B

Do you find yourself in the position of having a database that has a lot of data and a need to extract quantitative information from it? Or do you find that in some cases selecting large amounts of data is not practical. Large data sets can be costly too remove from a large database. When you think of these types of needs you think of data warehousing. From there you start thinking about big machines with large and costly licensed commercial databases. MySQL offers "user defined functions" which gives you the ability to extend MySQL for data warehousing needs. Through these you can extend MySQL to do complex analysis inside of the database. This is not limited to traditional character and number data, exotic binary data like images and music can be analyzed as well.

Examples will show how you can take well known Open Source libraries like Image-Magick and use these inside of MySQL.

Additional examples will be shown using myPerl. With myPerl you can even bypass the need to learn the internal structure of MySQL UDF structure and instead use a popular and easy to use scripting language like perl.

Download presentation file

MySQL Software - MyPerl

Basically this creates a poor man's stored procedure for MySQL using perl. You can store perl in a column (or just pass it directly to the myperl function). A sample call would look like: mysql> select myperl("$MYSQL_MYPERL_VALUE = 2*3");

New for this version:
You can now specify an integer for the first parameter if you need something longer then 255 characters.
Perl Interpreter is not longer created for each connection!
Other random cleanup

Index of -docs-pgsql-src-pl-plperl

PL/Perl allows you to write PostgreSQL functions and procedures in
Perl.  To include PL/Perl in the build use './configure --with-perl'.
To build from this directory use 'gmake all; gmake install'.  libperl
must have been built as a shared library, which is usually not the
case in standard installations.

Consult the PostgreSQL User's Guide and the INSTALL file in the
top-level directory of the source distribution for more information.

PostgreSQL Building and Installing PLPerl - PostgreSQL Manual - PHP Freaks

25.2. Building and Installing PL/Perl

If the --with-perl option was supplied to the configure script, the PostgreSQL build process will attempt to build the PL/Perl shared library and install it in the PostgreSQL library directory.

On most platforms, since PL/Perl is a shared library, the libperl library must be a shared library also. At the time of this writing, this is almost never the case in prebuilt Perl packages. If this difficulty arises in your situation, a message like this will appear during the build to point out this fact:

*** Cannot build PL/Perl because libperl is not a shared library.
*** You might have to rebuild your Perl installation.  Refer to
*** the documentation for details.

If you see this, you will have to re-build and install Perl manually to be able to build PL/Perl. During the configuration process for Perl, request a shared library.

After having reinstalled Perl, change to the directory src/pl/plperl in the PostgreSQL source tree and issue the commands

gmake clean
gmake all
gmake install

to complete the build and installation of the PL/Perl shared library.

To install PL/Perl and/or PL/PerlU in a particular database, use the createlang script, for example createlang plperl dbname or createlang plperlu dbname.

Tip: If a language is installed into template1, all subsequently created databases will have the language installed automatically.

SANS InfoSec Reading Room - Securing MySQL Server on FreeBSD 4.5

[Jun. 26, 2003] ONLamp.com MySQL FULLTEXT Searching

Have you ever wanted to search text stored in your database, but couldn't figure out how to do it efficiently? Are you lazy like me and don't enjoy maintaining reverse indexes, dictionaries, and word scores? You're in luck. The release of MySQL 4.0 has made searching text stored in databases available to the masses.

MySQL has had FULLTEXT searching in one form or another since version 3.23.23. FULLTEXT indices in MySQL allow database administrators and programmers to designate any character-based field (CHAR, VARCHAR, or TEXT) as a FULLTEXT index, which allows for complex text searching against data stored in those fields.

This feature is not to be confused with the LIKE function in MySQL. LIKE works more along the lines of a regular expression. On the other hand, FULLTEXT indices are fully indexed fields which support stopwords, boolean searches, and relevancy ratings.


MySQL Sessions

Check out the exciting MySQL sessions at this year's Open Source Convention including A Guided Tour of the MySQL Source Code and Benchmarking MySQL Queries.

This article assumes you have a working installation of MySQL, a good understanding of how MySQL works, and a basic understanding of web programming (with PHP, Perl, or something similar). Further, this article may not be of any interest to those who are already using FULLTEXT indices in a production environment.

How it Works

The MySQL team has made it extremely easy to add FULLTEXT searching to your tables. They are created much like regular KEY and PRIMARY KEY indices. For the purpose of this article we are going to make a basic blog table, put some data into it, and start searching. Before we get ahead of ourselves we need to create some tables.

Creating the tables

-- The main blog table with our FULLTEXT index
-- Nothing extreme here, but you get the idea
CREATE TABLE blog_entries
(
  entryID INT(9) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' AUTO_INCREMENT,
  posted INT(11) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  categoryID TINYINT(2) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
  title CHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  entry TEXT NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  PRIMARY KEY (entryID),
  KEY (posted),
  KEY (categoryID),
  FULLTEXT(title,entry)
);

-- A category table so you can organize your posts and 
-- later do some fun searching based on such data.
CREATE TABLE blog_categories
(
  categoryID TINYINT(2) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' AUTO_INCREMENT,
  name CHAR(75) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
  PRIMARY KEY (categoryID)
);

-- Add some data into your blog
INSERT INTO blog_categories VALUES (1,'Personal');
INSERT INTO blog_categories VALUES (2,'Work');
INSERT INTO blog_categories VALUES (3,'Editorials');

INSERT INTO blog_entries 
VALUES (1,
        1050942000,
        1,
        'About miester',
        'I was born in michigan in 1980 in a small town called Adrian. 
         My mother is named Sue, while my father is named Mike. 
         They currently live in a small town called East Jordan. On April 
         27th, 2003 I will graduate from Eastern Michigan University with a 
         degree in Computer Information Systems.');

INSERT INTO blog_entries 
VALUES (2,
        1050942000,
        2,
        'Today at work',
        'While I was at work today I was having some problems
        with the RAID array. It seems that we have a rogue cron script that 
        is causing problems. When I find out more info I will post it here.');

INSERT INTO blog_entries 
VALUES (3,
        1050942000,
        1,
        'Vacation!',
        'After I graduate I am taking a 2 week vacation. On my 
         agenda is a trip to Washington DC to see my girlfriend\'s sister 
         as well as throwing a few discs at the local disc golf course.');

INSERT INTO blog_entries 
VALUES (4,
        1050942000,
        1,
        'Vacation!',
        'I have had a horrible cold for the last few days. Today I drank a
         revive vitamin water with 150% of my daily dose of vitamin C. That
         should help things out.');

Querying the Data

Now that we have data in our tables we can begin to query it. There are some restrictions to FULLTEXT searching, which are covered below. You will want to read over the restrictions before you use FULLTEXT indices in a production environment. For now we are going to do a simple query for the word mother.

mysql> SELECT entryID,title
    -> FROM blog_entries
    -> WHERE MATCH (title,entry) AGAINST('mother');
+---------+---------------+
| entryID | title         |
+---------+---------------+
|       1 | About miester |
+---------+---------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

There are a few things to note when querying FULLTEXT indices. First, MySQL automatically orders the results by their relevancy rating. Second, queries that are longer than 20 characters will not be sorted. Third, and most importantly, the fields in the MATCH() should be identical to the fields listed in the table's FULLTEXT definition.

All other MySQL syntax works as you'd expect with a FULLTEXT search, meaning you can further limit your search terms. We could search blog entries based on posting date or category. If you let your imagination wander you can think of all sorts of ways to filter your data. Let's look for blog entries that only appear in the Personal category and match the term michigan.

mysql> SELECT E.entryID, E.title, C.name
    -> FROM blog_entries AS E, blog_categories AS C
    -> WHERE E.categoryID=C.categoryID AND
    ->       MATCH (E.title, E.entry) AGAINST ('michigan') AND
    ->       E.categoryID=1;
+---------+---------------+----------+
| entryID | title         | name     |
+---------+---------------+----------+
|       1 | About miester | Personal |
+---------+---------------+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Note that we not only did a join but also filtered the results based on the category. Another thing to note is that FULLLTEXT indices are not case sensitive. If you would like to use MySQL's relevancy rating in your code you can add the MATCH() ... AGAINST() clause to your SELECT statement as well.

mysql> SELECT E.entryID, E.title, C.name,
    ->        MATCH (E.title, E.entry) AGAINST ('michigan') AS score
    -> FROM blog_entries AS E, blog_categories AS C
    -> WHERE E.categoryID=C.categoryID AND
    ->       MATCH (E.title, E.entry) AGAINST ('michigan') AND
    ->       E.categoryID=1;
+---------+---------------+----------+-----------------+
| entryID | title         | name     | score           |
+---------+---------------+----------+-----------------+
|       1 | About miester | Personal | 1.2635315656662 |
+---------+---------------+----------+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Boolean Searches

Probably the most anticipated feature in MySQL 4.0's FULLTEXT is the ability to do boolean searches without having to process the query strings. This means you can add +s and -s to your queries, along with a host of other commands, and MySQL will interpret them for you.

mysql> SELECT E.entryID,E.title,C.name
    -> FROM blog_entries AS E, blog_categories AS C
    -> WHERE E.categoryID=C.categoryID AND
    ->       MATCH (E.title,E.entry) AGAINST ('+vacation -washington' IN BOOLEAN MODE) AND
    ->       E.categoryID=1;
+---------+-----------+----------+
| entryID | title     | name     |
+---------+-----------+----------+
|       4 | Vacation! | Personal |
+---------+-----------+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

We have two entries with the word vacation in the title, but since we removed washington, entryID 4 does not show up in the result. You can read all about IN BOOLEAN MODE on MySQL's FULLTEXT manual page.

Restrictions

A few restrictions affect MySQL FULLTEXT indices. Some of the default behaviors of these restrictions can be changed in your my.cnf or using the SET command.

Altering FULLTEXT's Default Behavior

There are several ways to alter the default behavior of FULLTEXT. MySQL has some tips for fine tuning the FULLTEXT search, but the details are a little sparse. The most common problem is the four character minimum word length on queries. Before we go over that, let's review the variables associated with the FULLTEXT searching.

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'ft%';
+--------------------------+----------------+
| Variable_name            | Value          |
+--------------------------+----------------+
| ft_boolean_syntax        | + -><()~*:""&| |
| ft_min_word_len          | 2              |
| ft_max_word_len          | 254            |
| ft_max_word_len_for_sort | 20             |
| ft_stopword_file         | (built-in)     |
+--------------------------+----------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The variable we wish to change is ft_min_word_len. According to the manual we should be able to change this via the SET VARIABLE command, but, in reality, this does not work. After asking the mailing list about this problem I was told this had to be specified as a startup option. To change the minimum query string to three characters, start the MySQL server as follows.

$ cd /path/to/mysql
$ ./bin/safe_mysqld --user=mysql -O ft_min_word_len=3 &

After you have restarted your MySQL server (don't forget to change your startup scripts) you have to rebuild the FULLTEXT indices. The manual suggests the following command:

-- Replace tbl_name with the name of your table
mysql> REPAIR TABLE tbl_name QUICK;

After you have rebuilt your indices, you should be able to search with query strings of three or more characters instead of the default four character limit.

Having fun with MySQL FULLTEXT Searching

I'll save the implementation details for a later article, but here are some interesting ways in which you could use MySQL FULLTEXT searching to finding data on your website more interesting.

/h4>

A great way to add cross referencing to articles would be to store a query (i.e., linux for a post about Debian GNU/Linux) with each article. If an article had a query, PHP could then perform a FULLTEXT search, returning those results as "Related Articles". Furthermore, you could use PHP to create an advanced search script that allowed users to search the database based on category, criteria, pricing, etc.

ispell

ispell is a great tool for open source developers to use to make their applications more user friendly. By adding ispell to your search engine, you can check the spelling of each query, offering alternate queries if the query was spelled wrong. Everyone's favorite search engine does something similar.

Looking towards the Future

According to the manual, the MySQL team has a lot they still want to implement into FULLTEXT searching. Here is a brief overview of those enhancements:

The proximity operators will really make FULLTEXT searching impressive. This will allow you to do searches on words based on how close together they are. For example, if you currently searched for 'mysql search' you would get results even where mysql and search appear at opposite ends of the document. With proximity operators, the scoring algorithm gauges how close together the words are. Documents where mysql and search appeared directly next to one another would score higher than documents where they were not close together.

Stemming is a great way to make search engines smarter. This would allow MySQL to search for words that share the same lexical root. For example, queries for running would return documents with ran and run as well as running.

[Jun 13, 2003] Are Open Source Databases Following in Linux' Footsteps By Clint Boulton

At a partnership announcement with Dell Computer in New York City back in April, Oracle (Quote, Company Info) CEO Larry Ellison stood alongside his fellow CEO Michael Dell and discussed how the Linux open source operating system was stealing market share from Microsoft's Windows products.

In the future, he asserted, Microsoft would be all but irrelevant by the Linux trend. The crowd nodded and smiled at his screed. This, you could almost hear them thinking, was Larry at his best.

But then someone in the audience took the flipside to his thesis, asking Ellison: If Linux, in all of its open-source glory, would irreparably harm Microsoft's proprietary approach, could he not see the threat of open-source database vendors to his company? Ellison said no, and then enumerated Oracle's market strength, brand, track record and high level of security as reasons for Oracle's staying power.

Few can dispute those points. Oracle, which specializes in selling to high-end customers, is still a $10 billion company at the top of the database market. In the most recent calculations from research firm Gartner, Oracle retained a whopping 43 percent of the overall relational database market. IBM and Microsoft, which also cater to small and mid-sized businesses with their database products, are the other two most successful vendors in the vaunted space, with shares of 24 and 17 percent, respectively. It should be noted that IBM, which bumps heads with Oracle often in the quest for large customer contracts, has posted impressive gains in the database sector, and led during the last quarter in terms of new, licensed users.

But while commercial database vendors remain locked in a lunge and parry fight for customers, in the background is a small movement in which providers are open-sourcing their database as a less expensive alternative to the ingrained vendors. This open-source movement, which some experts predict will follow a similar arc to Linux, is led by a Swedish firm that has been quietly building momentum as an alternative in the market for small business, departmental or commodity use: MySQL.

Industry opinion is divided as to whether MySQL or another of its ilk might challenge Oracle, Microsoft or IBM at the low end of the database market, where fewer specialty features are needed.

IDC analyst Carl Olofson summed up open-source databases technology: "Open source relational database management system (RDBMS) software is a disruptive technology. As such, it is used, not to address the high end requirements of those who demand the latest and greatest, but to address the needs of application and tools developers and vendors who are looking for just enough database technology to provide an affordable solution."

This is certainly comparable to Linux, which has enjoyed growth propelled by many major vendors, such as IBM and Oracle, as well as myriad Linux providers like Red Hat and SCO. These firms have pumped many dollars and resources into the movement to provide an alternative to proprietary systems such as Unix and Microsoft's Windows operating system. Isn't it imaginable, therefore, that open-source databases might follow the same path? After all, Linux started as a small movement, too.

MySQL's value proposition (contrary to Oracle, Microsoft or IBM) is to provide the code for its MySQL database for free, under the free software/open source GNU General Public License (GPL) or a non-GPL commercial license, which they make money from through service fees. And it's working.

In the spirit of "If you build it, they will come," MySQL has been building and users have been coming: MySQL has seen an estimated 4 million installations and over 30,000 downloads per day for its flagship product. The company counts Yahoo!, Lucent Technologies, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment among its customers. At a time when investor dollars are scant, the firm this month landed $19.5 million in funding, led by Benchmark Capital, and appointed one Benchmark general partner Kevin Harvey to its board.

MySQL versus the big three

Impressive credentials and support? Perhaps. But why go to an open-source database when Oracle 9i, Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2 are held in such high regard? In short, for the same reason why businesses are moving to Linux platforms: to save on total-cost-of-ownership, among other areas. The importance of this cannot be understated in this weak economy. Gone are the days when CEOs were looking to pad the top line; here are the days where the CEOS scrutinize how much cash they can shave off the bottom line.

So, consider a few options from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. Oracle offers two main packages, an enterprise edition geared for high-end use at $40,000 per processor and a standard edition for $15,000 per processor, which is targeted for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Similarly, Microsoft has a standard edition of SQL server for $4,999 per processor, and an enterprise-class offering for $19,999 per processor. IBM's DB2 portfolio features an enterprise edition for $25,000 per processors, and a workgroup edition for $7,500 per processor (comparable to Oracle and Microsoft's standard editions).

By contrast, MySQL offers its database on a much lower scale and cost to the casual user. MySQL CEO Marten Mickos discussed his company's value proposition and licensing model in a recent interview.

"We are what we call a 'second wave open source' company, meaning we have a functioning business model that is in harmony with our free software principles," Mickos said. "Our dual licensing allows us to offer our software free of charge under the GNU General Public License (GPL) while at the same time selling the same product under a regular commercial license. We can do this because we own our software and have the freedom to license it any way we wish."

Olofson explained where open-source database technologies, such as those provided by MySQL, and two of its brethren, PostgreSQL and Firebird, fit into the market.

"Although the huge majority of MySQL usage today derives from free open source downloads, MySQL hopes to move from the geek community to the business community through the embedded database model, and they are counting on this channel as a key to future revenue growth," Olofson said.

Mickos, who said the company's goal is to "make superior database technology available and affordable to all," said commercial licenses account for nearly two-thirds of its revenues. The remainder of the company's earnings come from support and services. MySQL charges a flat fee of $440 per server and customers can have as many users and as many CPUs as they want.

"Put this in context of the pricing of other DBMSs [database management systems] and you can understand why we sell so much," Mickos said.

Now, given the price comparisons between MySQL and the other, strictly commercial vendors, why isn't MySQL grabbing up market share by the fistful? Does MySQL not threaten the three giants? No, and Mickos and his firm don't claim to. There are many, many reasons for this, some of which Ellison alluded to last April. MySQL is new, much smaller than the database behemoths, and does not offer much of the special functionality of large database vendors, something that they say the high-end, more specialized customers require.

"We focus on the commoditized part of the market - the one in which performance, reliability, convenience and price are the determining factors," Mickos said. As such, Mickos said he and his outfit feel they are complementary to say, Oracle, or IBM, who offer some highly specialized features, as opposed to competitive. In practical terms, while Oracle may power the high-performance needs of a search firm, certain departments might use MySQL as a simple alternative.

What the commercial vendors say

It's tough to find members of the commercial side of things that would argue with Mickos. Jeff Jones, director of strategy data management at IBM, praised MySQL and its brethren, noted that they are commanded by smart people with some great ideas. But he still sees the pros of the commercial side.

"I think you can argue there is a focus and a clarity of requirement to the commercial side," Jones said. "IBM has been working with databases since the '70s and things are done differently. There is a different degree of ability, of relational theory, for what we do. We have to bring scalability optimization, we have to understand how to extend relational theory to handle things like XML, to extend search technology, integrate more analytic capability, federate integrated business intelligence."

Interestingly, IBM has a small database offering that can slide into the low-end slot alongside MySQL, in the recently released DB2 Express. Geared for the low-end market, or a handful of seats, DB2 Express is priced at $499 per server, or $99 per user.

Ken Jacobs, vice president of product strategy at Oracle, shares Jones' feelings about the main differences between the open-source database players and commercial vendors of today. But, like Ellison, he suggested that it is Microsoft that has the most to lose from open-source, arguing that the evolution of open-source databases like MySQL could chomp away at Microsoft's low-end market share.

"Microsoft may be the real target or victim here," he said. "When people make decisions to purchase a database one of the deciding factors to go with open-source is that it is cheap." Admitting that Oracle and IBM's products are not as cheap because they target customers with more specialized needs, Jacobs said any cannibalization from low-end products is likely to be in Microsoft's camp. Jacobs said Oracle does not feel threatened by MySQL, and, like Mickos, said he sees it as a complementary product. "These DBs are interesting and can serve a niche. In fact, I'd argue that MySQL customers are also Oracle customers who have outgrown SQL Server."

Sheryl Tullis, product manager for SQL server at Microsoft, begs to differ. First, she disputed the notion that that SQL server's success is tied to SMBs, as many people suggest. "In the recent Gartner figures, SQL server grew 16.8 percent, Oracle declined 20.5. That shows customers are seeing value in SQL Server."

"We think [open source databases] are a different segment than who we sell to," Tullis said. We see MySQL as being primarily for hobbyist technologies, or departmental use. We see it as something a developer might use if they do not want to go through IT procurement."

Tullis said if Microsoft's customers do need a lightweight database, Microsoft offers MSDE, or Microsoft SQL Desktop Edition, and embeddable engine developers or ISVs can use as a datastore. And it's free. Moreover, she argued that Microsoft has actually learned, through MySQL, how to create a "database community that is interesting and passionate."

One of the knocks on open-source databases is they don't have some of the features large-scale servers do, and are therefore not attractive to customers. Meta Group analyst Charlie Garry has heard the arguments about MySQL and its brethren not having the special functionality or scalability of a DB2 or a 9i. He has a counter argument.

"There is a line of thinking that Oracle overshot the market by having too much feature functionality," Garry said. "One is XML databases. There is not a whole lot of people who are storing data in XML format."

"Now, there's an interesting feature I would guarantee, most people have never even heard of it or knew it was in 9i," Garry said. Then there are things like a partitioning option. More than 60 percent of enterprises are running on 4 processors or less and 50 percent of the resources are unused. A lot of people don't need partitioning, or 64-bit indexing that are offered by commercial vendors, so these are not necessarily things that people want to pay for."

"The beauty of open-source databases is that that we often see a cycle among commercial vendors, where they to continue to add feature functions to trump that other guy," Garry said. "Open-source databases are forcing users to think what is important to me, and think about right-sizing. When you're a tech leader like Oracle, you run into this rut where you have to drive revenues, listen to investors who tell you need these esoteric features."

Slashdot Revisiting FreeBSD vs. Linux for MySQL

"Jeremy Zawodny, who looks after all of Yahoo!'s MySQL servers says MySQL now runs very well on FreeBSD. He is no longer steering people toward Linux. There are two important things you should do to make the FreeBSD/MySQL combo work well: (1) build MySQL with LinuxThreads rather than FreeBSD's native threads, and (2) use MySQL 4.x or newer."
Pathwalker (103) * <[email protected]> on Saturday May 24, @03:33PM (#6031858)
(http://house.ofdoom.com/~hungerf3 | Last Journal: Friday May 23, @05:20AM)
Personally, I like using "cd /usr/ports/databases/postgresql7 && make install" rather than using a binary package, as that way you have the source code on your system, and you can use all of the wonderful things in the contrib directory.

tsearch is a very nice GIST indexed full text search that does word stemming.
reindexdb is a handy way to regenerate all of the indices in a database without interrupting anything.
earthdistance is far faster than writing the same thing as a SQL function.
ltree is wonderful when you have to deal with a hierarchy.

And those are just the ones I remember offhand...

Re:or (3) pkg-add -r postgresql7 (Score:5, Informative)
by TheRaven64 (641858) on Saturday May 24, @09:39PM (#6033224)
(http://sucs.org/~theraven | Last Journal: Sunday May 25, @08:26PM)
Up to a point this is true. However MySQL does win on one point, namely that if you do not need most of the features of a real RDBMS then it is faster than Postgres. If you are just using it as an information store for a web site, for example, then it may be a better choice. As always, right tool for the right job.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]

Chapter_8 Data Mining and Statistical Analysis Using SQL A Practical Guide for DBAs

PostgreSQL The most advanced Open Source database system in the world

PostgreSQL101 -- quick start for Linux/FreeBSD users

Building a Database-Driven Web Site Using PHP and MySQL

codewalkers.com - interviews - PHP Help

An interesting interview with Michael "Monty" Widenius is the designer and lead programmer for the MySQL database. Some little known facts...

I know that MySQL really isn't made to work specifically with PHP alone, but since they're so popular together do you think there might be some type of collaboration in the future? And if so, can you give us any details? If that question doesn't make any sense, do you like beans?

Yes, we have are very interested in a close collaboration with the PHP people. In fact, we already work closely with them to ensure that the MySQL interface that is included with the latest PHP versions are kept up to date. We are also adding new functionality to MySQL that will help PHP users:

We are adding stored procedures (with the ANSI SQL 99 syntax) to MySQL. When this is done we will add support for PHP inside MySQL (as an alternative stored procedure language).

I can eat beans, but prefer to not eat them every day...

isolti's question:
Hi Monty, I like your product. It works great. My question is what feature(s), if any, is missing from MySQL that is in the proprietary Oracle? What missing feature (if any) could stop somebody from migrating to MySQL from Oracle?

This depends on lot of how your application is written. My belief is that MySQL's current functionally is good enough to make it possible to move a substantial portion of all new database applications to MySQL without any major difficulties.

The major difficulties come with old legacy applications that use either a lot of Oracle specific features or some of the ANSI SQL features that MySQL is still missing.

The biggest stumbling blocks are sub selects and stored procedures. Some applications (but much fewer) are also very dependent on views and foreign keys.

In the MySQL 4.1 source tree we already have working sub selects and we have three guys working on adding stored procedures to MySQL (for MySQL 5.0). Full foreign keys support is also planned for 5.0. In MySQL 3.23 and 4.0 we have only support for foreign keys for InnoDB tables.

When the above accomplishments are met, it will be even easier to migrate from traditional databases, like Oracle, to MySQL.

If you are depending on clustering (where replication is not good enough) or some of the more exotic capabilities of a database like Oracle, then it will still take some time before you can easily migrate to MySQL. Fortunately this is not true for most applications.

In practice we hear every day of people who are migrating from Oracle and other SQL databases to MySQL with good results and we are working hard on our side to ensure that this trend will continue.

webhappy's question:
Considering your long experience in designing databases, what do you consider the most challenging aspect? What parts were the most fun? In addition, because database software usually involves squeezing the best performance, what aspects of computer science do you feel are the most important in developing a next-generation database suite? And finally, do you think designing a database (of course, not something as full-featured as mySQL) could be a fruitful computer science project? :)

The most challenging aspect is to get the code bug-free for a lot of users that use the database in ways that you could not have even imagine when you wrote the code. Apart from that, to get the SQL optimizer to do right in 'most' cases is a challenging task that one could work on for several lifetimes:)

Most fun is the feedback you get from enthusiastic MySQL users who are successfully using your product in different ways and are impressed with how well it works.

The "science" that I find most important in developing databases is to understand how to get things to work in really small systems and design algorithms that are scalable from these to large systems. Unfortunately this is not something that is well known and only people who have had first hand experience with programming on 16K machines (or less) know this by heart.

Yes, designing a database can be a very fruitful computer science project; What can be equally fruitful is to take one of the open source databases (like MySQL :) and extend it to do things that it could not do before. This way you have not only done something that is good for yourself but also something that other people can enjoy and benefit from.

Jesse's question:
You have an interesting business model. Most companies that give away a product haven't been doing so well. I am interested to know where more of your revenue stream comes from, pay for support or paid (non-GPL) licenses? On the same note, what tips would you have for someone pursuing a similar business model?

For the moment the biggest part of our income comes from license sales of the non-GPL licenses, but support and training also provides good income to MySQL AB.

We have found that the GPL license works extremely well if you have a library that you can get very widely used and that is extremely useful to embed in a lot of commercial applications. A database server (MySQL), a language engine (Zend) or a GUI widget kit (QT) are good examples of this. It's not that good for standalone applications that people don't have a reason to embed in their products.

The tip I have is if you create an application and release it as GPL with the intention of selling commercial licenses for a non-GPL version, you should start giving a lot of free support to everyone that uses it and actively help people use and spread it.

I believe that you should NOT later change your license to a non-open source/free software license or have two different versions of the product --one (with less functions) for GPL users and a more featured version for paying customers. It's always better to be fully open source/free software compatible than try to create a hybrid.

imerilai's question:
Do you have plans for seriously developing a GUI for MySQL administration and SQL development? Something like MyCC, but much more functional? Or is your strategy focused on developing the core server and leaving GUI development for third parties?

Our current strategy is to work full time on MyCC and have this as a framework for all future GUI applications.

The idea with MyCC is that anyone should be able to create dynamically loadable 'plugins' to enhance it the way you want.

For example, if you don't like the way the current ALTER TABLE works in MyCC you should be able to code an alternative (better?) interface for ALTER TABLE and easily replace the default functionality with this.

By having a lot of plugins -- some created by us and others created by third parties -- we hope to have all the functionality in the GUI that you could ever ask for.

dimonemon's question:
My question is development related. Are there any, or will there be some books, tutorials, etc. that explain internal structure of MySQL so that curious people like myself can analyze and study the code and understand how subsystems interrelate and work together. Thanks, Dmitriy

This is something that we would really like to see happening and we have been working on this ourselves (albeit slowly because of time constraints).

In the MySQL source distribution the file Docs/MySQL-internals.texi includes a lot of comments of the MySQL source. Whenever we feel that something within MySQL needs to be documented so that we can understand how it works, we add it to this document.

Over time we hope that the above document will grow to cover all aspects of MySQL, but for the moment the source code is the best way to learn the internals of MySQL.

Grok's question:
As any Slashdot poster would be happy to inform you, the four big features missing from MySQL are Stored Procedures, Views, Triggers and Foreign Keys. I happen to disagree with them and think the most needed new feature is better database documentation. PHPMyAdmin has special tables that allow you to do this, but it needs to be more standardized which means the tables need to ship by default. Specifically, Foreign Key documentation and descriptions of each field in a table. This would allow pretty charts of the DB structure, but more importantly would allow those who work with the table to understand more easily how it works. Those above five features aside, what do you think will/would be the most important change to MySQL?

MySQL 4.1 will allow you to store foreign keys definitions and retrieve them for all table types. (Currently we only support this for InnoDB tables). MySQL 4.1 already supports comments for each field, in addition to table comments that 3.23 supports.

Apart from the above features the most important aspect is to add all the other missing ANSI SQL 99 features without making MySQL slower.

We are working on OLAP functionality in 4.1 (CUBE and ROLLUP) and are also constantly researching new ways to make MySQL even faster for data warehousing uses.

Another important feature is the ability to emulate other database syntax to make it easy to emigrate to/from them to MySQL.

lindset's question:
What do you think MySQL's biggest advantage(s) over other Database servers are? And what do you think is the reason for the success of MySQL on the web (MySQL on the backends of sites)?

Speed, reliability and light footprint are the biggest advantages of MySQL.

From the start MySQL was optimized for web applications and when the web took off around 1998 and people started to look around for a database, MySQL was there ready to be used.

In other words, the main reason was being in the right place at the right time with a reliable product that everyone suddenly needed.

Matt's question:
What was your inspiration behind MySQL? Why did you begin development in the first place?

First, MySQL was developed as a SQL interface on an old database motor that I had been working with (and written) over a period of 15 years.

We needed something that would enable web users to get access to the data and David Axmark (a co-founder of MySQL AB) and I thought that SQL would be the best language for this.

In other words, we developed MySQL because we needed it ourselves. We released it as open source because we believed that we had created something good and thought that someone else could probably have some use for it. We became inspired and continued to work on this because of the very good feedback we got from people that tried MySQL and loved it.

andyl's question:
We are currently moving from Access to MySQL, but the one thing that is sorely missed is the reporting features of Access. I know that I can use ODBC to connect and still use Access, but I would really like to get rid of it completely and find a lower cost (and better!) solution. Are there any plans for MySQL to offer something along these lines, or do you know of anything that can do the job?

Over time, the MySQL control center (MyCC) will include most of the functionality in Access that most users need. We have a long way to go for this but as more and more developers use MyCC and add new plugins to this we hope that we we'll have something for Access users in the not too distant future.

You can find the MySQL control center on the download pages at http://www.mysql.com

sync_db.pl

is a simple Perl script to sync a MySQL database from a dumpfile. For each row in the database that is different from that in the dumpfile, the differences are output and the user is asked what action should be performed. If there is a modification timestamp in the table, a suggestion is made to the user.

db2ssd - a tool for reverse engineereing database structures to uml diagrams

db2ssd ist a (no longer simple) perl-program that connects to a database, extracts it's structure and produces a diagram readable by the following programs

It is somewhat inspired by PostgreSQL AutoDoc but aims at beeing database independent (currently MySQL, Postgres and ODBC are supported at different levels of completeness)

Since db2ssd now supports DIA as well, it will be renamed to REVENGE soon (REVerse ENGineering -> REVENGE, see?). I still don't know what the last "e" might stand for :)) The internal modules are already contained in a package named Revenge.

Introduction to Xindice

Build XML-based applications with open source Xindice, a native XML database system, and see how this technology differs from relational database management systems. (Web architecture zone)

[May 22, 2002] Web sites insecure as ever

vnunet.com

Comment: Web sites insecure as ever. By David Rae [22-05-2002]

Most, if not all, of corporate web sites are fundamentally insecure. And this insecurity can allow attackers to access databases, delete or change information, and cause absolute chaos with very little effort or technical know how.

The problem is with web applications. Back in the good old days when companies used the internet for nothing more than hosting an elaborate electronic brochure, there was no threat. The IT guys would have little to do with the process, with the marketing department taking responsibility for outsourcing most of the work to third-party web developers.

Well things have changed. The level of interaction through corporate sites is overwhelming, and web applications allow this interaction to take place - whether it be shopping carts, authentication services or money transfers.

Whatever interaction takes place, information on the database has to be accessed. The commands coming from the web site are seen by firewalls and intrusion detection systems as bona fide - SQL commands are seen as legitimate.

Unfortunately, attackers can use this level of trust to their advantage by sending dubious requests to a database. The firewall and IDS will see the request as SQL, and let it through, but it is extremely unlikely the database will be instructed to look for 'expected' requests.

A direct SQL injection is the process of making a direct call to the database. It is frighteningly simple to carry out, and can have horrendous results for your business.

On many websites a simple SQL command will enable attackers to change such delicate information as Admin passwords and the price of goods listed in an online store. The scope for damage is limited only by the imagination of the attacker, and the strength and security of your web applications.

So what can you do about it? Short of ripping down your entire web site, and starting from scratch, securing every single web application is nigh-on impossible.

But an excellent place to start is the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). This was started in September 2001 by developers and security professionals to address this very problem.

Download the 'Guide to Building Secure Web Applications and Web Services' (the latest draft was released 10 days ago) and try very hard not to cry into your beer. It makes fascinating, if terrifying reading.

Being aware of the problem is the first step. It allows you to go to the board, set out your stall and say "This is what the problem is, this is why the problem occurred, this is what could happen and this is what needs to be done".

It also allows you to question web developers and any third-party security consultants you choose to hire, with confidence and knowledge of the problem.

OWASP is also working on an Open Source tool called Web Scarab that will test the security of your web applications. The group hopes to have the software completed within six months and it will be able to test a complete web site, or individual applications for security vulnerabilities.

Comment on this story
www.owasp.org
www.kavado.com

WODA Administrator's Manual

WODA is a standalone database management system for the World Wide Web. It consists of a Perl program e.g. woda-uk.pm, which contains WODA engine. Each individual database application is defined in the database definition file (definition). This file defines the data dictionary, customizes the user interface and then calls the engine for all the processing. It uses two hashes to do so:

One engine therefore supports several databases and is entirely database independent. All operating system dependent parameters are defined within the engine. There are a few language specific engines such as woda-uk.pl or woda-si.pl for the English (uk) and the Slovenian language (si). Friends on the Internet also created translations into other languages. So can you.

XML-DBMS (Perl)

Perl module for transferring between XML documents and relational databases.
Freshmeat

Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable [filter]
Environment :: Other Environment
[filter]
Intended Audience :: Developers
[filter]
License :: Public Domain
[filter]
Operating System :: OS Independent
[filter]
Programming Language :: Perl
[filter]
Topic :: Database :: Database Engines/Servers
[filter], Database :: Front-Ends [filter]

freshmeat.net Category Reviews - Non-SQL Databases for Linux

The best-known databases these days are based on SQL, but are often overkill for what you need to do. This review discusses lighterweight alternatives, including xBase, DBM, and ISAM systems.

freshmeat.net Editorials - You Say You Want a Revolution (or Dude, Where's My Database)

Remember those heady days of the mid-to-late 1990s? When Webmonkey was required daily reading, Hotdog and HoTMetaL Pro were the "cool" HTML editors (though vi and Notepad predominated), and the Browser Wars were relevant? When virtually all Web sites were collections of static pages, even if generated via some dynamic process(es) such as VB widgets or Perl scripts? When Perl CGIs and .shtml pages were the only true approximation of dynamic Web development available? When Java still meant coffee, ASP was a snake, and Linus was a character in the Peanuts cartoon? Remember? Ah, the bad old days.

Today, things on the Web are unbelievably different. Reflecting the entire culture of the Internet, the Web is today a collection of mostly dynamic Web pages. From the high-traffic sites running on custom or packaged software (such as Vignette Story Server or Future Tense), through the smaller business sites running off Cold Fusion/Access, to individual sites running off Blogger or similar packages/services, dynamic pages are overtaking static pages at an increasingly rapid rate.

[Feb 23, 2002] MySQL and Perl, the marriage of convenience

MySQL and Perl have been around for quite a while. They are still widely used even if the "fashion" is changing. This article talks about these two products working together as a whole, either on the Internet or on your local network. The provided example is written for Unix systems, free or not, even if it can be adapted to other widespread "systems". What this article is : a small review of what can be done with this pair, showing ease of use, speed, reliability, security...

What this article is not : neither a MySQL tutorial nor a Perl tutorial; neither a MySQL review nor a Perl review. Accordingly, we'll see MySQL at work in combination with Perl, without forgetting that "there is more than one way to do it".

[Aug 23, 2001] LinuxPR: Great Bridge releases integrated open source platform

Great Bridge did not last long...

"Great Bridge LLC, the leading provider of solutions based on the PostgreSQL open source database, today announced the release of Great Bridge WebSuite, an integrated open source platform for building high-performance Web-based applications. Great Bridge WebSuite integrates the enterprise-class Great Bridge PostgreSQL database with the popular PHP scripting language and market-leading Apache Web server to shorten application development cycles and accelerate time to market.

Great Bridge has packaged the WebSuite release with a graphical installer, leading administration tools, professional documentation and an installation and configuration support package to help application developers quickly and easily deploy the power of PostgreSQL for demanding business processes.

"We've seen tremendous interest in the open source environment from businesses. We want to fuel that interest by providing a ready platform for rapid development and deployment cycles of large-scale, database-driven Web applications," said Robert Gilbert, Great Bridge's president and chief executive officer. "WebSuite integrates the best open source technologies for the Web into a single release to shorten development cycles and speed time to revenue."

[Jul 1, 2001] Linux Gazette: PostgreSQL's Multi-Version Concurrency Control

Joseph Mitchell outlines a way that PostgreSQL users can work around the lack of a pure "no-locking" capability.
Quite a few people these days use Oracle in some capacity to store data
for applications. Anyone who is not an Oracle DBA (database
administrator), but needs to occasionally look into the database to see
whether data is being stored properly, is likely using sqlplus.

To set up environment variables to make access to the database easier,
many people will "su" to the Oracle user account (usually just
called "oracle"). Another way to do this is by putting the environment
commands into a file and source it.

    #!/bin/sh

    stty erase \^H
    ORACLE_BASE=/u01/oracle
    export ORACLE_BASE

    ORACLE_HOME=/u01/oracle/product/8.1.6
    export ORACLE_HOME

    ORACLE_SID=mydb
    export ORACLE_SID

    PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
    export PATH

    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/lib
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

    alias db='sqlplus user@mydb'

If you were to store a set of commands like this in a file and call
it "ora", then you could source it with ". ora" or "source ora" when
you need to check the database. In fact, if you're running more than a
single database instance, then you could set up a file for each of them.

Let's look at our environment after sourcing the file:

    boson% env
    HZ=100

    PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/ucb:/
     u01/oracle/product/8.1.6/bin
    ORACLE_BASE=/u01/oracle
    EDITOR=vi
    LOGNAME=mylogin
    MAIL=/var/mail/mylogin
    ORACLE_SID=mydb
    SHELL=/bin/ksh
    HOME=/export/home/mylogin

    LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib:/u01/oracle/product/
     8.1.6/lib
    TERM=xterm
    ORACLE_HOME=/u0/oracle/product/8.1.6
    PWD=/export/home/mylogin
    TZ=US/Pacific

Now that our environment is set up, we can start up sqlplus with the db
alias established at the bottom of our ora file. The db alias contains
the name of the user we want to log in as and the instance name that we
want to work with.

Either of the two approaches to gaining access to Oracle (using
the "oracle" user account or logging in after sourcing your own file
will require you to enter a password. One of the benefits of setting up
your own file is the tidy way in which we can set up aliases for what
may be numerous database instances.

The "stty erase ^H" command depends on the particular terminal type you
are using. When in doubt (and when the current setting doesn't
backspace properly for me), I enter "stty erase" and then hit my
backspace key. I can then put whatever shows up my screen (e.g., ^?)
into my file.

I find setups like this are particularly useful when I find myself
working on numerous systems and need to keep track of a minimal amount
of information for each of them.
Checking Oracle with the tnsping Command
By Sandra Henry-Stocker

Two weeks ago, this column described the commands for setting up an
Oracle user environment. By capturing such things as the Oracle home
directory and Oracle instance into a file, you can easily adopt an
environment that makes using sqlplus and issuing SQL commands easy.
Just knowing a small number of SQL commands allows you to troubleshoot
a database connection and determine whether a database server is
running and managing data correctly.

An important file that you might also want to get to know is the
tnsnames.ora file. On a client, this file describes the various
databases with which the client may interact; on a database server, it
describes
the databases or "instances" that the server supports.

The tnsnames.ora file, which you should find in the directory defined
by $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin, will have look something like this:

    DB01=
      (DESCRIPTION=
        (ADDRESS_LIST=
          (ADDRESS=
            (PROTOCOL = TCP)
            (Host = 123.45.67.89)
            (Port = 1521)
          )
        )
        (CONNECT_DATA = (SID = DB01)
        )
      )

The parentheses should balance (i.e., an equal number of open and close
parentheses) but the way the parameters are broken across lines is a
matter of style. The parameters that you will be most interested in are:

    * Host ? The IP address or fully qualified domain name of the
      Database server;
    * Port ? The port where the Oracle server should be listening for
      database requests;
    * SID ? The name of the Oracle instance.

The tnsping command can then be used to indicate whether a listener is
active on behalf of a database. Once you've set up your Oracle
environment (as described in the earlier column), you can issue a "ping
" command. If there are no problems, then you should receive
a response that says "OK" followed by the time required for the
response.

    % ping DB01
    Attempting to contact(ADDRESS=(COMMUNITY=DB01) (PROTOCOL=TCP)
     (Host=123.45.67.89) (Port=1521))
    OK (30 msec)

tnsping is especially helpful when you are unsure whether you are
connecting properly to a database. The netstat command may only show
you an ESTABLISHED connection:

    boson% netstat -anP tcp | grep 1521
    10.4.3.111:35793   10.4.3.5:1521   8760  0  8760  0  ESTABLISHED

The tnsping command, however, might indicate that the database is not
listening or that it cannot resolve the tns service, indicating that
it's time to check your tnsnames.ora file to ensure you are specifying
the correct information or talk to your Oracle database administrator
(DBA) to determine if there are any problems on the server.

To learn more about Oracle administration, you might want to check out
the slideshow available at
http://dclug.tux.org/bytes_1998_10_oracle/sld001.htm. Though this
slideshow addresses Oracle Database administration on Linux, it
applies, more or less, to Oracle on any Unix system.

If you work with systems that support or make use of Oracle, then
you'll likely benefit from knowing enough about database administration
to determine whether your databases are functioning properly.

[Jun 1, 2001] I/O Considerations for Database Performance by Jim McKinstry

McKinstry discusses various aspects of I/O that should be considered when designing a system to run a database.

[Apr 04, 2001] Open Source Databases Won't Fly by Nandit Soparkar (a faculty member at the University of Michigan).
Read the article carefully. It provides no specific examples, no example of production environment scenarios, no feature comparisons. Only sweeping generalizations. Postgres and MySQL, they can be awfully powerful in the skilled hands. Open source database may not be able to compete against Oracle and Informix on high end mission critical applications (like a database for an airport or bank accounts) but for a regular website MySQL and PostgreSQL can be quite competitive. Also there is some overlap between file systems and databases. Reiserfs looks like it is being extended to be a database as well as a file system...

... ... ...

Now certainly, you will not disagree that commercial databases have been wildly successful and time-tested. And in doing so, various problems have been recognized and solved or resolved (eg consider data independence). While open source systems are far newer and lithe, one still encounters problems in using them; eventually, they too will come to be similar in spirit to the commercial efforts: old wine in new bottles, or vice versa? And then there is the issue of installed base of legacy systems.

Significant is my lament as regards the lack of rigor in coding and programming. While there are relatively few well-accepted coding standards, at least the importance of issues such as careful documentation, checking for the logic in the programs written, maintenance of the versions, all contribute to errors.

... ... ...

Having said all of the above, let me also mention that I believe open source database systems will serve to provide the means to run pilot projects, teach people, as well as for relatively small projects. They will be wonderful in these cases, where one would not want to use a heavyweight commercial system: where a flyswatter would work well, a cannon would be disastrous Besides, it would be vastly cheaper-it always boils down to the money, I am afraid. And now, I must find myself a bomb shelter�

Ganesh Prasad - Subject: Wrong, and for the following reasons ( Apr 17, 2001, 01:02:42 )

A superficial glance at the relative market share and technical features of Open Source vs. commercial databases today may lead one to the hasty conclusion that commercial databases will continue to rule. However, there are many reasons why the tables could be turned in as little as 3 years.

These reasons (and they are mutually reinforcing) are progress, adequacy, economy and network efficiencies. Let's analyse them separately first.

Progress: Remember the arguments against Linux two years ago, before kernel 2.2? Linux wasn't scalable beyond two CPUs, it didn't support large files or large amounts of RAM, it didn't have a journalling filesystem, it didn't support USB, etc., etc. Most analysts then wrote off Linux for those reasons. What do people think now?

Similarly, PostgreSQL doesn't support replication, its query support isn't as extensive as Oracle's, PL/pgSQL isn't as rich as Oracle's PL/SQL, it doesn't have very good graphical administration tools, etc., etc. Do you think things will remain the same in 3 years? PostgreSQL 7.1, released just last week, fixed several deficiencies of 7.0 (2k row limit removed, outer joins supported, better support for complex queries, more performance improvements and better admin tools). Things will only get better.

Adequacy: It's often remarked that 90% of the market is at the low end. That's why more Toyotas are sold than BMWs, though BMWs are arguably "better". More people use products that are good enough and affordable than use the very best products. With the release of PostgreSQL 7.1 last week, PostgreSQL's claim to being "good enough" just got a lot stronger. More people will find PostgreSQL to be adequate for their requirements. Yes, Oracle or DB2 may still be "better", but how will they fare against a "good enough" product that is free?

Economy: PostgreSQL will always remain free of charge. That's not likely to be true of Oracle, DB2 or SQLServer. Those products may be given away in some special deals (sales promotion), but they're unlikely to remain free. When features converge, price becomes an important issue, and PostgreSQL has a permanent advantage over its commercial rivals.

Network efficiencies: Internet Explorer has had an enviable distribution channel, -- the Windows CD --, which has led to its ubiquity. PostgreSQL has an equally potent distribution channel -- the Linux CD. PostgreSQL will penetrate every organisation penetrated by Linux. When a good enough database comes free with your (free) OS, why hunt around for another one with gratuitous extra features that you need to pay for?

Now put these four factors together. A free database that is good enough for most users and keeps getting better, comes to you free with your OS. How long can you resist?

Prof. Soparkar's argument seems to imply that customers are fools. I respectfully disagree.

Ganesh Prasad

Nick Mailer - Subject: And in the real world.. ( Apr 17, 2001, 01:36:08 )

Well, I run a popular hosting/solutions company, and I helped hand-write our whole support/customer service/billing/invoice/cashflow database system in Perl and MySQL, and I can tell you that the system beats the hell out of the big, bloated, expensive Oracle-type solutions. It's been running brilliantly for about three years now, and we've never had one single problem with the technology in that time. Yes, maybe Postgre would be fun for having the RDBMS handle some transactioning (but, to be honest, I am quite happy to handle that at the Perl side) - but then Postgre is Free Software too :-)

So here you are, Mr Dataquest Professor Expert. I am a CEO in the Real World running a Real World Company, and I can tell you _out right_ that if Oracle paid _me_ money to run their system, I would not accept it. Huge, bloated, hidden, unnecessary - that's exactly the sort of nonsense I dispensed with when I ditched the Microsoft world (well, the X Window System excepted, but life can't be perfect ;-)

Paul - Subject: Re: Strange Attitude ( Apr 17, 2001, 02:30:09 )
>

> A lot of people writing this stuff are already being paid to write code. Are they not going to use the same techniques and expertise in their open source code? In fact, when you're writing because you want to and have more freedom in how you do it (instead of being management led) I would expect it to be better.
>

Bingo. I think you nailed it exactly, people always excel when doing something they enjoy. I think that those who write open source typically take more pride in what they do, as their names are attached.

Rupert Pigott - Subject: Re: Roach Motel... ( Apr 17, 2001, 13:10:28 )
> The same dynamic applies to MySQL and PostgreSQL. Plus, customers have the source code, so they don't have to wait for the developer to fix the bugs. The point is, don't underestimate the ultimate success of open source products.

This is why I hated "Profs" at Uni. While I was required to substantiate my arguments they'd come up with some ill-researched, unsubstantiated drivel and it would be law. Given that his vocation and job *should be* founded on substantiated agrument we have to question how he acquired his title.

For example, he FAILED to mention (I can only assume that this is due to a lack of research) that INFORMIX was originally based on Postgres (which is of course the forebear of PostgreSQL).

Obviously INFORMIX has is further down the line on this dynamic than PostgreSQL, but I don't see any reason why it can't continue to improve and acquire features just like it's commercial counterparts. PostgreSQL has already got some unique features such as the versioning system it uses for transactions, err, that's a *GOOD* innovation, as opposed to a check box on marketing literature.

Prof. Pigott (Master of Unsubstantiated Drivel)

http://www.sapdb.org/

a former closed source commecial "enterprise" level database now is open sourced. SAP DB is the database engine behind one of the world's best known enterprise applications systems is now under GNU licenses (GPL and LGPL). You don't often get more enterprise mission critical that SAP R/3.

[Jan 20, 2001] IBM developerWorks: Using Perl to Access DB2 for Linux

IBM developerWorks offers this tutorial on using Perl's DB2 components.

[Nov 11, 2000] Linux.com: Installing and Configuring: MySQL, Apache with SSL, PHP, and mod_perl

"...we'll assume you have a x86 computer running Debian GNU/Linux. We'll also assume you have a basic understanding of how to use a UNIX shell, and that you have superuser access to the machine. Everything in this example can be done remotely via ssh or telnet as well as locally from the machine console."

[Oct 11, 2000] Enterprise Linux Today: Leading PostgreSQL developers join Great Bridge

"Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane and Jan Wieck, part of the six-member international steering committee leading the development of PostgreSQL, will assume senior-level positions at Great Bridge."

MYSQL. - AbriaSoft - Software for An Open World

great LAMP distribution ( LAMP: Linux (operating system), Apache (Web server), MySQL (database) and PHP (scripting language).)

Abria SQL Lite provides all the tools needed to develop web-database applications in a quick and easy installation. Abria SQL Lite includes MySQL, Apache Web Server, Perl, PHP, and phpMyAdmin.

Why and How I Installed PHP4, MySQL, and Apache on Windows 98 By Edward Tanguay Originally appearing in The Web Developer's Journal.

Four months ago I was selected as Web developer for a large Web site project for six hospitals here in Berlin. It was going to be an exciting project in which I would work together with a marketing company to realize a network of Web sites. However, when we had the first meeting, the head of the computer department said, "Wait a minute. You program in ASP? We run Linux boxes here and can't justify the cost or security risk of an NT-Server." They were unwilling to budge and I didn't want to force Microsoft on them and then have to work with disgruntled system administrators, so I backed out gently and declined the contract.

Beyond ASP: JSP, ColdFusion or PHP

Since that day I've been looking for ways to extend my server-side programming skills beyond the powerful but environment-limited Active Server Pages. I concluded that I basically had three choices outside ASP for server-side scripting: JSP, ColdFusion and PHP. The first, JSP, is promising but still has a relatively small community and a lack of ISPs which support it. In addition, if you use the JSP server from Allaire it is quite expensive. The second choice, ColdFusion, also from Allaire, provides you with a powerful and robust server-side scripting environment centered around databases and e-commerce, but again, the problem is it simply costs too much. If you don't have access to the multi-thousand dollar Enterprise server, you're out of luck (the free ColdFusion Express server doesn't even support session variables - not very useful).

LAMP is red hot and free

PHP, on the other hand, is free. It is combined with three other technologies to form a powerful Web development solution abbreviated LAMP: Linux (operating system), Apache (Web server), MySQL (database) and PHP (scripting language). Even with MySQL's insistance that businesses pay a nominal fee for its use, Linux, Apache and PHP are absolutely free which make the LAMP solution the most cost-effecive solution for individuals, universities and businesses. Web devlopers wishing to acquire valuable scripting skills can do so for free. On top of that, LAMP is generally known to be more secure and robust than other solutions (less crashing, less rebooting, inherent UNIX security). On top of that, LAMP has one of the largest, most active, most dedicated communities on the Web. PHP and the LAMP solution was clearly the best choice for me and I was excited.

The Linux hurdle

However, if you are a Windows user, learning Linux is like being parachuted into Italy without knowing Italian. You will be hopelessly and thoroughly lost at the UNIX prompt. Although my repeated forays into the Linux world have enabled me to install Suse Linux 6.4, set up the X Window System and even use the vi editor, I still lack so much basic knowledge of Linux that even the simplest things such as unpacking files or installing software bring me to a paralyzing stop. So even if you are the type of Windows user who can buy a $50 computer book on almost any application and become an expert in it by the end of the week, Linux is not something you are going to learn in a week, or a month or even a year without an inordinate investment of time, effort, paradigm shifting and lots of long, frustrating nights. Hence LAMP is not an option for the casual Windows user wanting to learn PHP scripting.

Settling for WAMP

Luckily, PHP, MySQL and Apache can also run on Windows (hence WAMP). Note that this is not the most stabile platform to serve your pages to the world, but it is an adequate solution if you want to learn and begin developing with PHP/MySQL while remaining in your familiar Windows environment. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL on your Windows 98 machine, then upload your applications via FTP to a more stabile LINUX or UNIX server. WAMP is a good compromise for Windows-based Web developers who want to expand their server-side scripting skills into PHP and MySQL.

WAMP installation cryptic but not impossible

It took me a full seven days until I had Apache, PHP and MySQL on my Windows 98 installed, configured and working. It was not easy. The Web is full of well-meaning but conflicting manuals which give you instructions such as to enter "/php4win/" when it should be "c:/php4win/" - that one took me two days to figure out. Another two days was spent downloading incorrect MySQL packets (the manuals tell you to "download MySQL" but when you get to the page you are faced with a choice of about 30 different download possibilities). Luckily there were some very helpful people on the Web Developer's List who kept helping me until I got it. Thanks again to all of you!

Free workshop on installing PHP4, MySQL, Apache on Windows 95/98

If you want to install PHP4, MySQL and Apache on Windows 95 or 98, take my free online workshop on how to do it. This 14-step workshop has explicit instructions and screen shots which will lead you past all the pitfalls. With this Workshop, you can have PHP4, MySQL and Apache installed, configured and working on your Windows 98 within the hour.

Edward Tanguay is a Web developer and language trainer based in Berlin. For more diaries and tips on development visit Edward's Web Developer Site.

Ed Barlows Sybase Shareware

Slashdot 30+ GB Databases On Unix

Someone please tell me that I will be able to use large files painlessly on Linux sometime. Until then, run large databases on name brand UNIX servers with name brand UNIX. Linux on x86 is good at a lot of things, but a large database isn't one of them YET.

CaptainZapp asks: "A customer of mine runs a ~30 GB data warehouse on a Sybase SQL Server Database. Now their business requires a mirror of this database in a different location. An offer by a reputed U/X vendor for the hardware turns out to be about five times as expensive as when you get a reasonable x86 box, with the necessary amount of disk space and, say, 1 gig of memory. What does the esteemed Slashdot community think: Is Unix capable of handling a database of this size and what other terrible pitfalls do you foresee?" He's not worried about "mission-critical" here, he's just wondering if it's possible.

Two words (Score:4, Interesting)
by JonK ([email protected]) on Wednesday July 26, @08:23AM EDT (#44)
(User #82641 Info)
Bad Idea.

Changing RDBMSs is a Really Painful Experience and one to be avoided at all costs if possible: it makes changing OSes look trivial (hell, even upgrading from one point release to the next can be a world of pain). If the data's already on Sybase then for god's sake keep it on Sybase. Go for Sybase on Linux, Sybase on SCO, Sybase on NT or whatever but remember: it's a RDBMS and the underlying platform is effectively irrelevant (pauses for flames as thousands of enraged Slashdotters start to spout off and steam at the ears)

Re:Three words:with three words (Score:4, Informative)
by arivanov on Wednesday July 26, @09:30AM EDT (#117)
(User #12034 Info)
Very bad idea. Or maybe even "Stupidity is limitless"

1. If you have not noted Oracle legal has walked around every single site that had Oracle vs X benchmarks (X=mysql, sybase, informix) and made them drop them. This is actually possible under the 8.0x EULA. Actually just read the EULA. It is a masterpiece in itself. You are not allowed to benchmark the product and not allowed to question the fact that it is fscking slow and not ANSI compliant. That is besides the fact that if I was you I would not buy something where the manufacturer intentionally disallows fair comparison with other products. It is enough to say fsck this at least for me...

2. The original database is on Sybase. Sybase is at least more or less syntactically ANSI SQL compliant. Oracle is as far from ANSI as it gets. It will be a good guess that it will take you ages to port the bloody thing. And porting it will be more expensive than the "expensive" hardware.

3. I would see if the database design is implementable under postgreSQL or MySQL on an Alpha. Alpha is cheap. A reasonably good alpha is under 5000$. Storage will be a 1000$ more. This is as much as an appropriate x86 box. Postgres does not have a 2GB database limit anyway as it splits database files. MySQL does not have this limit on alpha because the platform is 64 bit. Your problems are in the key limitation/lob interface for postgress and transactions for MySQL.

4. If Neither of the solutions in 3 is implementable you have to open wide you wallet and buy informix for Intel or DB2 for intel. Both of them work and are ANSI compliant. In btw DB2 for Intel linux developer edition is free. Free period. No expiration. So you can actually see if the database will work. And they match Oracle on some benchmarks and DB2 beats the crap out of it when it comes to real scalability and clustering.
@*** Baker's Law *** Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

30Gb databases (Score:1)
by LinuxGrrl (Rachel at LinuxGrrls dot Org) on Wednesday July 26, @07:56AM EDT (#7)
(User #123916 Info) http://www.linuxgrrls.org
Linux/IA32 probably not, at least under e2fs as you'll likely hit the 2Gb filesize limit, depending on how the database engine involved implements storage (Oracle using its own data partition in "raw iron" style?). Linux on other architectures, specifically the 64bit ones (Alpha, Sparc, Sledgehammer and IA64 before long) would probably be fine.
Re:raw partitions (Score:4, Interesting)
by rnturn on Wednesday July 26, @10:46AM EDT (#183)
(User #11092 Info)

``oracle uses its own raw partitions/filesystem to store its data. this speeds up oracle''

It doesn't have to manage it's own disk space. And it may, under certain conditions, provide better performance. We have been moving away from raw data partitions. This after running some benchmarks of a large table residing on raw partitions vs. the same data residing in tables in a filesystem. The performance was actually better while accessing the data in the filesystem. We're talking 10+% better performance not just a few percent. Our experience, based on our benchmarks, and discussions with Oracle technical people, is that the preference for using raw data partitions was based on performance tests using older versions of UNIX and less capable filesystems. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Aside from performance, if your database changes frequently, adding and deleting tablespaces is a major pain (with long downtime) when you're using raw data partitions but is a snap when you're using filesystems for data. If your database is fairly static raw partitions might buy some little bit of performance but, again, at the expense of managability. IMHO, raw data partitions just aren't worth it. Even if comparitive performance were a wash, the easier means of managing the database weighs in favor of filesystems.

Oracle officially recommends against RAID ... (Score:4, Informative)
by Nicolas MONNET ([email protected]) on Wednesday July 26, @11:52AM EDT (#225)
(User #4727 Info) http://monnet.to
seek times are dramatically improved in most (if not all) RAID levels

Seek time is not going to be any better in mirrorring, for one. The two heads reading the same data won't go faster than one head, will they?

Then for striping, this usually won't make any kind of difference since data access will be randomly spread over the disk. So there you go.

NOW smartly organizing the database WITHOUT striping amongst several disks *will* make seek times faster, actually, it will require less seeking. A typical Oracle installation (as recommended by Oracle) will have for example the software on one disk, the indexes on another, and the actual data on a third.

Now since one DB transaction requires typically at least one index lookup and one data retrieval, which are unlikely to reside close to each other on one disk. Now when they're separated on two disks, subsequent queries will have less seek time .

Now, since I was right, will you give me my karma back? ;)

Sybase.com Adaptive Server Enterprise for Linux Download Page [Sybase ASE 11.0.3.3ESD#6]

Linux Today

"The current version (ASE 11.0.3.3 ESD#6) package is different from previous distribution of ASE 11.0.3.3. The new package separates ASE and OC/OS SDK. Also OC/OS is now available for Alpha platform. You can also find FreeBSD version of the package. Intel, Alpha and FreeBSD releases differ only in packaging and they are all built from the same source."

"Software is FREE for development as well as Deployment. The License Agreement has been updated to include FreeBSD platform."

"Adaptive Server Enterprise 11.0.3.3 ESD#6 for Linux runs on Linux systems with Kernel 2.2.12 and glibc-2.1.2-11 installed. Verify that your system meets the hardware/software requirements before installing the software."

Database browsing, analysis and manipulation - easier than ever! -

a tool for working with SQL Server and probably Sybase databases. Suggested by Boris Denin

Inprise - Borland Introduces Interbase 6.0 Now Free and Open Source on Linux...

Linux Today

"Inprise/Borland (Nasdaq: INPR) today announced the availability of the source code for InterBase 6.0, its cross-platform, standard query language (SQL) relational database management system (RDMS). Binary formats for the Linux, Windows and Solaris operating systems are also available for download, free of charge. With Version 6.0, Inprise/Borland introduces performance improvements, a higher level of SQL92 compliance, and a replication engine."

[Jun 29, 2000] NewsAlert -AbriaSoft Announces Its First Distribution Of MySQL Database Software For The Open Source Market

FREMONT, CA -- (INTERNET WIRE) -- 29-06-2000 -- AbriaSoft(TM), a provider of database solutions, announced today the launch of its new distribution, Abria(TM) MySQL Lite. AbriaSoft is an Open Source company founded to provide packaged MySQL(TM) support and software with development and administrative tools to the public. MySQL is an Open Source database, originally developed by T.c.X Consulting in Sweden.

Abria MySQL Lite significantly reduces the cumbersome process of installing and configuring MySQL and Apache into a quick installation of less than ten minutes. Abria MySQL Lite offers an integrated, turnkey install of RedHat Package Modules (RPMs) for MySQL 3.22, Apache Web Server, PHP3 and Perl. PhpMyAdmin, a tool for web-based MySQL administration, is also included. AbriaSoft's distribution runs on the RedHat Linux 6.x platform. Versions for other Linux distributions will be released later in the year. Abria MySQL eases the installation of all these components on a RedHat Linux server, and makes sure that all dependencies and files install correctly. Older versions of MySQL are automatically upgraded to newer versions.

"This distribution of MySQL is the first of its kind," says Mark Gerow, Project Manager for AbriaSoft. "We believe this will further establish MySQL as the premier choice for a back-end database for Web servers."

Abria MySQL Lite is available for unrestricted free download from AbriaSoft's Web site (www.abriasoft.com). News, information, and FAQs on Abria MySQL, and on other Open Source products are also available at the site. As an added service to MySQL fans, AbriaSoft will be offering computer-based training (CBT) courses on CD-ROM for MySQL. These interactive training CD-ROMs will be available for demo and purchase on the AbriaSoft Web site in July 2000. AbriaSoft will be shipping its "Standard" and "Professional" editions within the next two months, offering SSL, WebMin, AbriaSoft MySQL Admin Tool, GUI Admin Tools, and all the components necessary in quickly install and run a high performance MySQL web site.

DBGUI - Sybase database interface

The current (DBI/DBD) version is 2.1.8. (Released Apr 01 2000)
The current (SybPerl) version 1.6.8. (Released December 14 1999). From program description:

DBGUI is a complete X graphical database interface that can -

Linux Today - Wired Red Hat Wants the Whole Fedora

"The financial wizards who successfully launched Red Hat, the celebrated Linux vendor, are now targeting the lucrative database market as the next fertile ground for capitalizing on open-source development."

"Frank Batten Jr.'s Landmark Communications, which took Red Hat public last year, launched subsidiary Great Bridge LLC to market commercial products and services supporting open-source database PostgreSQL."

"PostgreSQL has more than 1,000 developers worldwide and competes with leading proprietary databases such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. Great Bridge's launch coincides with the release of PostgreSQL version 7.0, which adds performance improvements, new querying capabilities, among other enhancements."

[Apr 19, 2000] LinuxWorld: A practical guide to Oracle8i for Linux

"If you've been having trouble installing Oracle8i, be bewildered no longer. Uche Ogbuji explains why Oracle8i is one of the wildest, wooliest installs ever, and how to work around its quirks."

[Apr 2, 2000] PostgreSQL book completed through chapter 10

New chapters on numbering rows, combining selects, data types, transactions and locks.

Linux Today Linux Journal IBM's Universal Database

Have you been trying to install DB2 Universal Database on a Linux-based workstation? Did you run into some troubles? As I scan around the DB2 and Linux newsgroups, I hear from many of users who are getting frustrated when trying to get DB2 running on Linux. How did this problem get so big? Well, the Linux phenomenon is relatively new and ever-changing. Recently, all sorts of vendors are flocking to market their distributions, with slight differences between them all. Combine that with what seems to be quarterly releases and you can see how communication channels between the Linux vendors and the people who build applications to run on them get clogged. While efforts are being made between application developers and Linux vendors to define this communication pipe, you can use the information in this article to get yourself up and running in no time at all.

DB2 for Linux is officially supported on the following Linux distributions: Caldera OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, TurboLinux and SuSE Linux. This article will take you through the steps involved in installing DB2 on each of the supported Linux distributions. In the article, I assume you have not previously installed a version of DB2 and you are not maintaining any of the default users created by a default DB2 Installation. The three user IDs that will be created during a DB2 installation are: db2inst1, db2fenc1 and db2as. If you have any of these users on your system, be sure to remove them and their associated directories before installing DB2. This article also assumes you are familiar with the rpm command, used to install packages. If you are not familiar with this command, refer to your Linux documentation.

Complete Story

Interbase.com: Inprise Offers InterBase 6.0 - Linux for Public Field Test

InterBase 6.0 is a powerful, high-performance cross-platform relational database designed for business-critical, mobile computing and Internet-based applications on Linux, Windows NT, Solaris, and other UNIX operating systems."

Linux Planet offers two tutorials on setting up a MySQL based website part 1 and Part 2.

Linux PR Orasoft Team Releases 3.0 of Oracle Apps for Linux

Press release:
Dec 10th, 17:50 UTC

The graphical applications use the GTK widget set and are released under the GPL.

GODFREY, Illinois, Dec 10-- The Orasoft team is happy to announce the official stable release of the Oracle Applications for Linux suite. We believe that it is the most advanced database software available on the Linux platform for using and managing Oracle databases. The graphical applications use the GTK widget set and are released under the GPL. Source code and RPM executable are located at the Orasoft website (http://oracle.mattshouse.com).

Included in the suite are the following applications:

Procedit: - A visual procedure/function/package editor.
SqlWork: - A database querying tool similar to SQL Worksheet.
Session Monitor: - A DBA snooping tool to view user activities.
TableBrowser: - A table viewing/manipulating application.

The release follows a lengthy beta period in which over 1000 people participated.

Version 3.0 of the suite was released Dec. 9 and is now available for free (RMS) download.

CONTACT: Matthew Chappee
[email protected]
Orasoft Team Leader
http://oracle.mattshouse.com

Linux Today PostgreSQL Book In Progress by Bruce Momjian

I have completed through chapter 6 of my book, "PostgreSQL: Introduction and Concepts." Of course, this is only the first draft. It can be viewed at:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/awbook.html

There are major improvements in this version. I have added sections to chapter 4 dealing with DEFAULT and functions/operators. The figure placement and font usage is improved.

Chapter 6 covers using multiple tables and joins. This was a very difficult chapter for me to write.

-- Bruce Momjian
http://www.op.net/~candle
[email protected]

Linux Today The Register Red Hat preps e-commerce oriented Linux upgrade

"The Oracle connection comes from the two companies' plan to promote Oracle 8i on Linux. The notoriously anti-Microsoft database giant is already pushing its product hard as a key e-commerce tool on Windows, and by working with Red Hat it can provide a solution that's entirely Windows-free."

"To that end, Red Hat will build stronger links to Oracle 8i into its Linux distribution. The journaling file system, which records file operations, making recovery from crashes a less haphazard -- and therefore faster -- operation, a new volume manager and support for greater amounts of RAM all help here too."

LinuxPlanet- Apples and Oranges- A Linux DBMS Comparison, Part I

SlashdotNetscape gives Good Press for MySQL and Linux -- interesting discussion

OS2 e-Zine! - MiniSQL versus MySQL

TDAN Archive -- The data base administration newsletter archive.

[Feb 10, 1999] DBMEdit

A user-friendly Web-based DBM database editor (in Perl 5)

Recommended Links

Google matched content

Softpanorama Recommended

Top articles

Sites

**** Open Directory - Computers Programming Databases

**** Pal's Linux RDBMS Library

This site is a compilation of the best free online readings about relational databases on Linux. If you're a Linux RDBMS/database administrator, a database designer/developer, or simply a Linux user with database ambitions, you'll find links to valuable resources here: articles, papers, and books on various aspects of relational database management. Needless to say, much of this material is more or less applicable to other (UNIX) environments, too.

Ingres - Frequently Askes Questions

DB Resources

Bruce Momjian's Writings

The Open Web Application Security Project

MYSQL. - AbriaSoft - Software for An Open World -- great LAMP distribution ( LAMP: Linux (operating system), Apache (Web server), MySQL (database) and PHP (scripting language).)

Abria SQL Lite provides all the tools needed to develop web-database applications in a quick and easy installation. Abria SQL Lite includes MySQL, Apache Web Server, Perl, PHP, and phpMyAdmin.

Databases


Free Databases

Etc.

Free for individual and non profit use

Etc.


Drivers


Etc

SS-File Database Manager -- flat file database



Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotesSomerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose BierceBernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater�s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: June 26, 2021