On The Margins

Wednesday June 24, 2009

[ Code ] Contributing to MySQL

If interested in contributing code to MySQL, you should attend the MySQL University session on contributing code to MySQL.

(Live broadcast with Q&A will be held on Thursday, June 25, 2009. You can still have access to rebroadcasts afterwards.)

2009-06-24 01:57:05.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code community contribution databases mysql

Thursday June 18, 2009

[ Code ] Among the favorites

One of my favorite JIRAs on Apache is #Derby-646.

2009-06-18 23:12:12.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
apache databases derby java-db jira open-source

Wednesday May 27, 2009

[ Code ] Haskell and Python

Luke Plant's short note ("Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer") actually motivates the reader to learn more about Haskell and Python. 

2009-05-27 14:20:22.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
c# development haskell programming python software

Monday April 27, 2009

[ Code ] More Code Contributions to MySQL

MySQL has deep roots in open-source software development communities and code contributions to MySQL keep flowing in, being reviewed and integrated into the MySQL. 

During our BoF at the MySQL Conference and Expo, Lenz Grimmer talked about our work to make MySQL (even more) contributor friendly, with some more focused effort starting on February 1, 2009¹.

The desire to contribute code to MySQL remains as strong as ever as evidenced by this year's MySQL Conference and Expo, where I had an opportunity to speak with some contributors and partners who wish to contribute to MySQL. Of course, there are a lot of strong and varying opinions in this area.

As I said above, code has been contributed and absorbed in MySQL (according to either the MySQL CLA or SCA contributor agreements) for years now.

Examining just the patches and contributions submitted through the MySQL Bugs database, some 16 pieces of code contributions to MySQL have been absorbed into some version of the MySQL server in the first 4 months of this calendar year, and there are some 17 SCA signatories who are intent on contributing to MySQL.

As examples of code contributions being currently reviewed, one may point to two thread on "internals," one involving a review by Konstantin Osipov (contributor: Antony Curtis, WL#820) and another a review by Guilhem Bichot (contributor: Erik Ljungstrom). 

[1] February 1, 2009 was exactly 10 years from the day I started working for Sun Microsystems Inc., February 1, 1999, when I started in the J2EE RI development team.

2009-04-27 22:28:17.0 -- Comments [5] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code contributions databases mysql open-source

Wednesday April 22, 2009

[ Code ] Portlanders Take the Realm

Last year, OSCON decided to move from its traditional venue in Portland.

Now, Portlanders, who identify their city as the real bastion of Open Source Software, have decided to establish OpenSourceBridge.ORG, a conference for Open Source citizens!

In July, where would you rather be?

2009-04-22 00:10:02.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
development open-source programming

Friday April 17, 2009

[ Code ] A BoF on Community Code Contributions to MySQL

The BoF schedule for MySQL Conference and Expo (2009) is now published. Lenz Grimmer, Sergei Golubchik, Tomas Ulin and myself will be available during a BoF which focuses on MySQL Community Code Contributions. Lenz will be moderating. For background material, you may start here.

2009-04-17 22:12:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code conference databases developers mysql programming technology

Wednesday April 15, 2009

[ Code ] Developing with MySQL Connector/C++

Giri Mandalika has written an article showing how to develop C++ database applications for MySQL and another article showing how to install MySQL Connector/C++ from the source.

2009-04-15 14:29:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
c++ connectors databases development drivers mysql programming

Tuesday April 14, 2009

[ Code ] MySQL Conference Notes

MySQL Conference 2009 is coming around the corner, next week, in Santa Clara.

You may want to delve into the notes, as a fast way to learn about the happenings.

If you want to become an active code contributor to MySQL, the hackfest by Mark Callaghan seems interesting, and you should probably also start here and here. 

There will also be a special BoF geared to community contributors. (I still haven't been able to find out about the exact timing of this but you should be able to find out if you're there. Once I learn about the exact time, I'll post it here.)

2009-04-14 23:06:14.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
community conference databases developers mysql notes programming users

Tuesday April 07, 2009

[ Code ] Three Great Beta Deliveries in One Week

Three great beta deliveries in one week!

MySQL Connector/.Net 6.0.2 beta, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL.

MySQL Connector/C++ 1.0.4 beta, a new release providing  C++ API for connecting client applications to the MySQL Server. If you know JDBC, this should be familiar to you.

MySQL Connector/C 6.0.0 beta, a new version of the C API for accessing MySQL database servers

Use them and let us know what you think.

Learn more about Connector/C++ here.

Learn more about Connector/C here.

For FAQ on MySQL Connector/C; MySQL Native C API; libmysql; libmysqld, see here.

Addendum (April 9, 2009):

Ulf Wendel has just announced the alpha version of the MySQL driver for Open Office. (Thanks go, also, to Andrey Hristov who did much of the work behind this! For a full list of credits, see Frank Schoenheit's note.)

Instead of calling the MySQL Client Library directly, as the earlier versions did, the new version relies completely on the MySQL Connector/C++. (See above.) As Ulf notes, "Connector/OpenOffice.org is a thin wrapper around Connector/C++. OpenOffice.org and the MySQL Connector/C++ are written in C++. The OpenOffice.org database interface is derived from JDBC. Connector/C++ offers a JDBC like API."

2009-04-07 22:54:53.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
.net c c++ connectors databases jdbc microsoft mysql software

Tuesday March 31, 2009

[ Code ] MySQL Community Contribution: One bug fix at a time ...

It is all about one bug fix, one little feature, one step at a time.

Armin Schöffmann fixed a bug (Deadlock in mysql_real_query with shared memory connections, is what Armin calls it), Armin signed the Sun Contributor Agreement (24 March 2009), Vladislav Vaintroub and Davi Arnaut reviewed, committed and queued the patch to MySQL 5.0 bug team (26 and 27th of March, 2009).

That's a great example of open, contribution-based MySQL development with real results.

Thank you Armin!

Thank you Vlad!

Thank you Chad!

Thank you Davi!

Thank you ... the one whose name I've left out! (Feel free to leave a comment below.)

2009-03-31 23:41:55.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
contribution databases mysql open-source software

[ Code ] MySQL Ideas for Google Summer of Code (GSoC)

Check out the ideas from MySQL for Google Summer of Code 2009!

These are specially-selected projects for students who are looking to do some coding in a real, open-source, highly-adopted software environment. 

The learning experience will be tremendous given that MySQL engineers will be mentoring them. 

Some student stipend is provided by the Google Summer of Code. It is intended for students to gain "exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits."

2009-03-31 11:36:40.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code databases mysql software technology

Tuesday March 17, 2009

[ Code ] New Sun Contributor Signatories for MySQL

I just checked the "Sun Contributor Agreement" (SCA) signatories list, and there are already 11 people who have signed the contributor agreement with an intent to contribute to MySQL.

Among the signatories, you will also notice Paul McCullagh of PrimeBase/PBXT fame. (To learn about how to submit your SCA paperwork, see here.)

Signing the SCA with an intent to contribute to any given Sun-sponsored open-source project would also suffice when it comes to contributing to any other Sun-sponsored open-source project.

So, as an example, Nils Goroll is both an OpenSolaris and MySQL contributor. (See Nils' OpenSolaris profile and see MySQL bug id 7417.)

Of course, it goes without saying that you do not need to be an OpenSolaris contributor to be a MySQL contributor. My intent here was simply to show how signing the SCA helps the contributor to reach out, interact and contribute w.r.t. any Sun-sponsored projects. The SCA signatories list, of course, makes all of this much more plain.

2009-03-17 23:01:36.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
contribution databases mysql opensolaris sca solaris sun

Saturday February 14, 2009

[ Code ] Contributing Code to MySQL -- Some Simple Guidelines

If you would like to contribute to MySQL development, you can read the relevant top-level page on the MySQL Forge.

This page has some useful links to various forms of contributing to MySQL, including contribution of code to MySQL. (The MySQL|Sun team have recently simplified some of these pages in order to make them more useful to community members and potential contributors.)

Note that after some simple paperwork submitted to Sun ("Sun Contributor Agreement" or "SCA"), any signatory can contribute to any Sun-sponsored open-source project, including to MySQL.

It is a common parctice to require initial paperwork to clarify rights to the contributed work. This practice is also used by other open-source communities such as the Apache Software Foundation.

It is worth quoting, from the the master document, that

As we gain more experience, absorb more contributions and receive feedback from the contributors, please expect some modifications to the contribution system described here.

2009-02-14 01:43:00.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code community databases development mysql open-source software sun technology

Saturday July 19, 2008

[ Code ] ACM Queue Magazine

Craig Russell (of Sun Microsystems Inc.) has written the lead article of ACM Queue special issue on object relational mapping (ORM): "Bridging the Object-Relational Divide". The opening sentence provides the motivation most succinctly: "Modern applications are built using two very different technologies: object-oriented programming for business logic; and relational databases for data storage."

2008-07-19 21:19:27.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
databases object-oriented object-relational orm persistence programming software technology

Tuesday March 20, 2007

[ Code ] John W. Backus

Today, The New York Times carries an obituary to John W. Backus, of the "Backus | Naur form" notation and the lead of the IBM team who brought us Fortran. Many a scientific computing wizard will today salute Mr. Backus for what he and his team accomplished.

While the need for new programming models was dire in the 1950s, a move by Backus to initiate an applied research program to invent a higher-level language led to a revolution in software. The first Fortran team worked on the language from 1953 to 1957. ("The first written reference to 'software' as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958," according to The NYT.)

In my experience with Fortran, I join many others who used this first-generation higher-level language to do useful things, including much scientific research.

I wrote my first toy computer program, which calculated the first 1000 primes, in Fortran. Later on, I wrote Fortran programs to calculate temperature profiles in three dimensional body embedded in a heated environment, to study dispersion and diffusion of particles in turbulent flows, to investigate the dynamics of particle-particle collisions and systems, and to perform direct numerical simulations of fluid flow and vortex-vortex interaction in an infinite body. In short, in the mid 1980s, I spent many hours doing scientific programming in Fortran. (Some of this work got its way into my masters dissertation and other to my Ph.D. dissertation. Much of it remained at the level of pure investigation and study.)

Note: For a modern progeny, see Fortress.

2007-03-20 08:59:43.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
code fortran programming software

Sunday February 04, 2007

[ Code ] Railing about Rails

While I may rail about Rails here, you could do something more useful by consulting  Peter Schow on how to get Rails 1.2 up and running on Solaris 10 with PostgreSQL, and by checking it out and sharing on Open Solaris. Alternatively, for another Web 2.0 development environment, consider Phobos.

2007-02-04 22:54:51.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
programming

Sunday January 21, 2007

[ Code ] Scrum and Sprints

Scrum is a light-weight agile software development process composed of Sprints, during which the next release of a system is being developed. To read about Scrum see ControlChaos and MountainGoatSoftware. (MountainGoatSoftware's Scrum page summarizes things quite nicely in the first paragraph on the top.)

2007-01-21 20:43:13.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
development process

Wednesday January 17, 2007

[ Code ] TDD

The cost savings and efficiencies of Test-Driven Development (TDD) should be clear not just to any hardware engineer but also to software and other engineers, system designers and developers. In fact, even when we imagine we are developing without a test, we implicitly have some kind of test in mind: We build systems in order to elicit specific responses to specific stimuli (tests?) upon those systems. Most software developers know how a good test can drive their work, particularly when the system is complex with multitude of constraints and also when there are volumes of existing tests to detect regressions.

Peter Marklunds describes TDD with Ruby in some detail.

2007-01-17 23:00:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
development ruby software tdd testing

Thursday December 21, 2006

[ Code ] Statistics on Open Source Projects

Now, we have places to go to for open source project statistics.

For example, see the Ohloh statistics for Apache / Derby.

2006-12-21 19:10:43.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.
apache code open programming

Thursday December 07, 2006

[ Code ] Power Javascripting

jMaki means business with power Javascripting and more, including Phobos.

If you know your stuff, you'll check them out! 

2006-12-07 16:50:53.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.
application java javascript phobos server web