Keeping It Simple

Category: mysql

  • Idea for “pure” mysqlnd interface

    When I first heard about the mysqlnd project at the MySQL Camp in 2006, somehow I thought it was going to be 100% PHP code. I can’t remember now if I was making an incorrect assumption or if they planned to write it in PHP but changed their mind. What we have today is a…

  • In Support of the Relational Model

    Every few years, a wave of people claim that the relational model falls short of modeling data structures of modern applications. This includes some really smart people recently such as: – Jim Starkey– Brian Aker– MIT researchers This trend of criticizing the relational model started almost immediately after E. F. Codd published his seminal paper,…

  • Proposals for MySQL Conference

    I submitted proposals for the MySQL Conference & Expo. SQL AntiPatterns III thought it would be a no-brainer to do a sequel of my 2007 talk, “SQL AntiPatterns”. That talk was very well attended, thanks to Jay Pipes’ endorsement in his guide to the conference. It’s not hard to come up with all-new content for…

  • SHA2() patch for MySQL 5.0

    I’ve created a patch for MySQL 5.0.33 to provide a function SHA2().Download it here: http://www.karwin.com/sha2.patch.gz It really just calls out to the OpenSSL library for the digest functions. So you have to build MySQL from source with OpenSSL support enabled. You can use the function in SQL syntax like: SELECT SHA2(‘message’, 256); The second argument…

  • Change == Opportunity

    Bob Field posted his reactions to the recent MySQL announcement to offer two versions of the MySQL Server product: Enterprise Server and Community Server. I feel somewhat similarly; the change has the potential to give greater value to both the corporate customers of MySQL and their community users. It will be interesting to see how…

  • Catch-22 of the Active Database

    People frequently ask if they can do fancy things in triggers, such as writing to the filesystem, sending an email, or notifying other applications of data changes. I always recommend against doing things like this. Calling an external processes from a trigger or UDF is very difficult to get right, and it is very easy…

  • Working on SHA-2

    Several months ago, it became clear that one could crack a SHA-1 message digest. It was still a nontrivial problem, but it could be done thousands of times faster than brute-force guessing. So SHA-1 has become undesirable as a secure message digest, and U.S. federal software security standards now call for software to use SHA-256…