First Kosovo Free Software Conference

The first Free Software Conference in Kosovo is being held on August 29-30 in Prishtina, Kosovo. The newborn state, which declared independence in 2008, is growing in several ways. Besides economic and political growth, also technology is expanding. In this fresh environment, free and open source software can have an important role. The conference schedule includes local and international speakers.

I have a strong professional and personal relationship with Kosovo. Before and after the war, from 1998 to 2002, I was part of the OSCE-UN mission that helped the country in its first steps towards independence. And there I found my wife. Thus, it's with great pleasure that I will do a keynote on the theme of Freedom beyond free of charge.
And although the talk won't be about MySQL, it will nonetheless have a role in the story. Some of the freedom that was achieved during the UN Mission in Kosovo days is also due a combination of Linux, FreeBSD, MySQL, and many more free software projects.

MySQL Sandbox and Spider at FrOSCon and OpenSQLCamp

FrOSCon and the OpenSQLCamp are about to start. I am packing for Sankt Augustin, where I will attend the fourth edition of FrOSCon and the second OpenSQLCamp. I will have two sessions, Sharding for the masses, about the Spider storage engine and MySQL Sandbox 3, about one of my favorite tools.

The program is very rich. There will be several tracks in the main event and in the associated conferences. If you have any involvement or simply some curiority in open source matters, You will find something interesting at FrOSCon.

Testing the InnoDB plugin with MySQL snapshots

The cat is out of the bag. MySQL 5.1 will include the InnoDB plugin, and thanks to labs.mysql.com you can try the new version right away. Here is a step-by-step guide to testing the InnoDB plugin with MySQL snapshot 5.1.39 and MySQL Sandbox.

1. Install MySQL::Sandbox

This is a straightforward part. Please refer to the manual for the details.

2. get the binaries

Check the list of available binaries and download the one that matches your architecture and operating system.

3. Install the sandbox

Since we want to use the InnoDB plugin, we need to start the Sandbox with the builtin innodb engine disabled.

make_sandbox \
/path/to/mysql-5.1.39-snapshot20090812-osx10.5-i386.tar.gz \
-c ignore-builtin-innodb

The option passed with "-c" will be written to the options file.
Make sure that the sandbox is installed and the server starts. If it doesn't, check the error log at $HOME/sandboxes/msb_5_1_39/data/msandbox.err and try to figure out what happened.

4. Check the available engines

~/sandboxes/msb_5_1_39/use
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2
Server version: 5.1.39-snapshot20090812 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

select engine, support from information_schema.engines;
+------------+---------+
| engine     | support |
+------------+---------+
| MyISAM     | DEFAULT |
| MRG_MYISAM | YES     |
| BLACKHOLE  | YES     |
| CSV        | YES     |
| MEMORY     | YES     |
| FEDERATED  | NO      |
| ARCHIVE    | YES     |
+------------+---------+

As you can see, InnoDB is not in the list.

5. Install the innodb plugin

install plugin innodb soname 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.85 sec)

select @@innodb_version;
+------------------+
| @@innodb_version |
+------------------+
| 1.0.4            |
+------------------+

6. Install the additional INFORMATION SCHEMA tables

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_TRX SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_LOCKS SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_LOCK_WAITS SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_CMP SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_CMP_RESET SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_CMPMEM SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

INSTALL PLUGIN INNODB_CMPMEM_RESET SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

7. Finally, check the results

select plugin_name, plugin_type, plugin_status from information_schema.plugins;
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+
| plugin_name         | plugin_type        | plugin_status |
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+
| binlog              | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| partition           | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| ARCHIVE             | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| BLACKHOLE           | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| CSV                 | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| FEDERATED           | STORAGE ENGINE     | DISABLED      |
| MEMORY              | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| MyISAM              | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| MRG_MYISAM          | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| InnoDB              | STORAGE ENGINE     | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_TRX          | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_LOCKS        | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_LOCK_WAITS   | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_CMP          | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_CMP_RESET    | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_CMPMEM       | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
| INNODB_CMPMEM_RESET | INFORMATION SCHEMA | ACTIVE        |
+---------------------+--------------------+---------------+

Now you can read the InnoDB plugin manual and have as much fun as you can.

Beefing up community feeds

If you weren't paying attention, you may have missed the latest news in Planet MySQL. A few months ago, the site has added the ability of voting for posts (in addition to searching and tagging, which make it much more useful than it was before). However, if you, like many, read Planet MySQL using a feed reader, the recent benefits are not easily usable. To allow everyone to vote on the posts they like, even from a feed reader, the feeds now include two links at the end of for each post, to vote on a deserving post even from a feed reader.

The feed may look like this one:

Since I liked this post, I can click on Vote UP, and the link opens in my default browser, showing the result of the voting.

The same happens for the MySQL Librarian feed. At the end of each post, you can click on vote UP or vote DOWN directly from your feed reader.
In both cases, the vote works only if you are already logged in. If you aren't, you will be taken to the login page.
This is not the end of the story. More goodies will come. Stay tuned.