Databases Archive

"In a world of people obsessed by turning the tiniest idea into something profitable, Dr Richard Hipp's best-known software stands out for two reasons - he actively disclaims copyright in it; and at a time when multi-megabyte installations are booming, he has a self-imposed limit on the size of his product: 250KB. And he's stuck to both aims. 'I think we've got 15 kilobytes of spare space,' he says of the headroom left in the code."

Microsoft has released a second free service pack for its popular SQL Server 2005 database application. The update makes SQL Server 2005 compatible with Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 suite, and adds a number of data compression, manageability and interoperability enhancements. Microsoft has also changed the terms under which SQL Server 2005 can be run using virtualisation software.

"At the time, most of us thought Oracle undercutting Red Hat's Linux business with its Unbreakable Linux was a big deal. Would customers flock to Oracle's cut-rate version of RHEL? Would Red Hat be pounded by Larry Ellison's minions? After a few months, the answers appear to be: No, it wasn't a big deal; and no; and no."

Oracle on Tuesday released fixes for 51 vulnerabilities that affect its software products. The update is part of the company's quarterly patch cycle. Oracle preannounced its patch release Thursday, when, for the first time, it published an advance notification so customers could plan ahead to apply the fixes.

MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions - Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general.

PostgreSQL 8.2 is now released (sources, binaries) while you can read the release notes here.

"I had a few minutes to burn today, so I did what I'm sure you were doing: I read the Oracle Enterprise Linux Services Agreement. It's funny what you find when you start digging around in the legalese that governs the Big Announcement that Oracle made. It makes 'Unbreakable Linux' look a little flimsy."

After 2 years in development, the Firebird Project today officially releases the much-anticipated version 2.0 of its open source Firebird relational database software during the opening session of the fourth international Firebird Conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

"Yesterday Oracle announced the release of their own version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, simply called Enterprise Linux or 'Unbreakable Linux'. In a remarkably similar move to such projects as CentOS, Oracle have decided to remove all Red Hat specific trademarks and brand it as their own (all quite legit, of course). They will be supplying bugfixes for this new version, and will also be synchronising it with future releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We decided to take a peek at what Oracle had come up with. Read on for a first-look, and the Linux Format team's opinions." In the meantime, Mark Shuttleworth said a partnership with Oracle is no longer a matter of if, but when.

"No one saw this coming. People talked about Oracle making its own Linux, or buying a Linux company (Ubuntu?). But, the news that Oracle is erasing Red Hat's trademarks from Unbreakable Linux and supporting it for less than Red Hat is a bolt from the blue. Or, perhaps, I should say that Oracle is firing a shot at the heart of Red Hat, and commercial Linux? This really, really ticks me off." Apparently, Oracle announced that they will provide full enterprise support for Linux and so it competes with RH.

"This tutorial describes how to set up MySQL master-master replication. We need to replicate MySQL servers to achieve high-availability. In my case I need two masters that are synchronized with each other so that if one of them drops down, other could take over and no data is lost. Similarly when the first one goes up again, it will still be used as slave for the live one. Here is a basic step by step tutorial, that will cover the mysql master and slave replication and also will describe the mysql master and master replication."

The new version of Berkeley DB, the OSS embeddable database Oracle acquired along with Sleepycat, promises better performance and the ability to do upgrades on the fly. But does Oracle really have open source street credibility? One expert says not really. On other DB news, check this audiocast on PostgreSQL while Zmanda launched the first comprehensive backup solution for MySQL.

Attendees of the recent New England Oracle Applications User Group conference got a refresher course on some of the key tools that Oracle developers use to customize E-Business Suite applications. Sridhar Bogelli, the leader of the session and founder and chief executive officer of Apps Associates, an application development consultancy, told attendees that properly using the tools provided by Oracle and third-party vendors can help developers and their companies avoid embarrassing, production-related problems.

Many open source software users, consultants and other IT pros believe that Oracle's recent moves in the OSS market - including its purchases of open source stalwarts Sleepycat Software and Innobase - were undertaken as part of an effort to destabilize Microsoft.