Further RSS issues

My saga with RSS continues. As I stated before, changes to MySQL's forum site led me to pursue using an RSS reader as my main interface to the forums. That worked quite well until recently. My only issue had been that the various replies to a post showed as separate entries to the reader, with no connection between them. Coming back from a self-imposed hiatus, I find that this problem has been fixed, at the expense of creating another one. Now, each thread shows up once only in the reader, along with an indication of how many replies have been posted. This is fine, except that the thread is not marked as updated, and so threads that get replied to are never highlighted as unread by the reader. This of course makes it extremely difficult to conduct timely and efficient interactions with someone on the board. I now have to peruse the forum web page with the thread list looking for new posts, an error-prone procedure supposedly eliminated by the reader, which had been popping up little notes on my screen when someone replied.

I have enjoyed helping out on the boards in the past, and intend to do so again, however without a foolproof automatic means of being notified of new replies, this rather puts a crimp on my activities.

Reaction to the iPhone concept

I find the new iPhone to be conceptually very interesting. Now, I am very new to the world of PDAs— I have only just started using one, a cast-off Palm Pilot from someone, and already I am thinking of things that it should be able to do but doesn't, or I haven't learned how yet. I suspect that very shortly I will be wondering how I got along without a PDA all these years.

Now, this new iPhone from Apple (I hope that they win the name from Cisco, as I have never ever heard of a Cisco iPhone but the name seems to naturally fit alongside iPod and other Apple products) will apparently be running a version of OSX. I find this very intriguing, because it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, including perhaps being able to run MySQL on it, or at least a client, perhaps a small database replicated from a fixed or not-as-mobile source.

At first glance and after hearing various reports, it sounds like a very capable device even without getting under the hood and finding out what makes it tick. Of interest will be what CPU it uses, getting stuff to compile for it, etc.

A Fork In Progress

It looks like MySQL AB is going about the code fork in a very methodical, gradual, and thoughtful fashion. The latest Community release seems evidence of this. It was released as source-only, as promised, however it was announced that since no community contributions have been made to the community tree, the release was made from the Enterprise tree. In effect, the actual fork has not taken place yet. There is a community tree in evidence in BitKeeper, but it appears to be a placeholder only so far. The changes to date have been with regard to policy and procedure, not code.

I see this as a good thing. This gives MySQL time to evaluate reactions to these changes while implementing them in a gradual fashion. The changes appear well thought out and sound, and reflect changes in the community, the marketplace, and the customer base. It's important to balance all of these factors since they all play a part in the life of the product.

Knowing who the community user is, and who the enterprise user is, is important too. The focus should be on prioritizing catering to the needs of larger groups first, with the knowledge that some may not see their needs met directly. But this is an open-source product, so surely someone can rise to the occasion and fulfill a niche need.

New Bitkeeper client, old one broke

As has been pointed out, there is a new version (2.0) of the free BitKeeper client, and furthermore the old one (version 1.1) appears not to work anymore. At first I suspected my daughter's hogging of available bandwidth as the culprit when all of my daily pulls of MySQL source trees failed, but that soon proved not to be the case. I am once again pulling source code successfully.

Now that it's forked ...

Now that the MySQL code base has been forked into Enterprise and Community editions, and things have had time to sort themselves out somewhat, it looks to be pretty much business as usual. The community is as lively as ever in the forums, code fixes are still being pushed to the community tree, etc. There are a few complainers but it seems that you can never please everyone and someone will always find something to beef about. I have been watching the BitKeeper sources, pulling and building nearly every day. Version 5.0 jumps two or sometimes three revisions at a time, I have the strong impression that the skipped numbers have to do with the Enterprise edition. I have not seen any Enterprise source, and I am curious as to when and where this will be available. I also see a lot of activity in 5.1 and some work on 4.1.

Those who need frequent and timely bug fixes basically have two options: subscribe to the Enterprise edition or learn to build from source. Building from source is not rocket science, at least in the Linux world, and I feel it's worthwhile learning how to do this if one wants to be truly proficient and knowledgeable with MySQL.

From my perspective it's pretty much business as usual.

Selecting a Database

When people are comparing databases and trying to select the correct one for their application, it is a very complex and confusing process. There are many factors, price being not the least of these. Some would opt for a closed-source product because of the extra bells and whistles it offers. I have to say that some of these extra features may represent security risks, or simply a database trying to take on functionality better performed at the application layer. There is a certain argument to have all of your business logic embedded in the database as it certainly eases the burden on the application programmers. But it can allow them to become sloppy, or to allow the database to be exposed directly to the users without even an application layer to protect it, counting on the database to protect itself. In some cases this comes at a price, sacrificing speed for security, when some fairly simple application coding could have implemented the same security and retained the speed. Granted some things are better done in stored procedures than application logic, and it's worth running some tests to see which is better, or considering moving the logic to the database if it is performing poorly in the application.

Price, too is a consideration. With open source, you can test the functionality without an initial investment before opting for a support package. Then, when the decision is made to purchase support, MySQL sweetens the deal by offering the Enterprise package, with some extra functionality just for the paying customer. True, it is new, and has some issues to be worked out, but it is a marvellous concept, and I am curious to see some indication of how well it is selling. As I have stated before, perceived value is an important aspect to some people, the 'bang for the buck' principle, and this new offering caters to that.

Sometimes it is a mindset issue, and I have to say I have been guilty of this at times. It is very easy to move into a new situation and recommend the familiar tools that one is familiar with, even if this means a capital outlay for the new employer. I have done this, and also had this done to me by others, so I can't be too hard on them. Open source requires an open mind in a lot of ways. I see many ingenious solutions to problems. I also see these rejected at times by those of narrow perspective continuing to try to develop solutions in this new environment using guidelines and experience drawn from elsewhere.

Not that experience isn't valuable, but the spirit of innovation must prevail, and a willingness to accept change. Also sometimes one must consider that perhaps the familiar closed-source product has rather bent the standard and changed the rules, so that suddenly finding an environment where these rules are enforced, and with increasing strictness, can be a shock to some. Some complain of this behavior, calling it wrong if familiar code won't execute because it took advantage of an extension previously available.

Sometimes this failure leads to a decision to return to the closed-source world, despite all the good advice on how to adapt.

Inaugural Phoenix Meetup

So the first ever Phoenix MySQL Meetup finally happened tonight. Four of us went to The Yardhouse to sit around and talk geek talk about MySQL and related topics. Hopefully more will come to future meetings. The focus seemed more social than technical, comparing notes on individual backgrounds and occupations. We'll have to see how it evolves as it grows. It'll be interesting seeing what the core group is and what the common interests, an opportunity to compare notes and do some networking of the social variety.