Open Source Database Magazine

Earlier today I completed a major update of the website for Open Source Database Magazine. Since I am primarily a database administrator and definitely not a web site programmer, I hired someone to do the work for me. Overall I think they did a pretty good job. While I am sure that the site will continue to evolve for some time, it will be quite some time before I do anything else to the site of this magnitude.

For those who signed up on the previous version of the site, I was able to bring your accounts over to the new site. Those people should have received an email with your login (email address) and a random password. While I had to briefly reset the password to a random one, it was reset shortly afterward to your old password. I am sorry for the inconvenience but it was necessary and will lead to a better site down the road. Your information was never published or compromised in any manner. I purposely do not store any sensitive information on the website. I do not store user’s credit card info or even the first and last name of the users.

If you have any issues you can send an email support@osdbzine.net.

thanks,

keith

Exciting news!

The next issue of Open Source Database Magazine is now available. This information-packed issue has over 60 pages of information including:

• Firebird’s Road Trip and What’s New with 2.5
• Coding Corner: Trees – Where’s the Performance?
• PostgreSQL’s tsvector: Secret Sauce for Search Engines
• The Lab: The XtraBackup Program for MySQL – Part Two
• Drizzle – A Lightweight Database for the Web
• Kontrollbase: Enterprise grade MySQL monitoring and analytics
• Creating a Twitter Mashup with MongoDB
• Introducing LucidDB

Plus the usual news and views. All of this for $4.95.  It is simply the biggest and the best issue we have ever released. Ready to sign up? Head over here to register and then you can download the new issue. Curious as to what this is all about? I just posted an online addendum to the Drizzle article in our free content section that will give you a taste of what you can expect.

Thanks to the contributors. You all did a great job and I appreciate it!

Sorry the website isn’t currently as polished as the magazine. While it doesn’t look pretty, it is functioning. And now that the magazine is out I can turn my attention to it again.  If you experience any problems let me know at editor AT osdbzine.net.

thanks,

keith

Two days ago Amazon announced the release of a new product, the “Relational Database Service”. Essentially, MySQL 5.1 on a AMI with no access to the server other than through the mysql client API. They are posing it as a network database appliance. I would propose that it’s a start but not the end game.

While I think it’s a great move on Amazon’s part there are some flaws. The limits on access pose a large challenge. I can’t see log files or the my.cnf. I have to depend on others for performance tuning and backups. I don’t particularly care for that.

Along ith the new RDS Amazon recently announced new “high-memory” instances (up to 68.4 GB of RAM) and price cuts that will take place beginning November the 1st. The increased memory makes these server instances even more practical.

I like the Amazon products. Amazon has a history of  both adding new cloud services and continuing to polishing the ones they already have. There is a good chance that with some tweaks (such as the ability to perform replication) this could be a great service. I don’t think it will ever completely replace “traditional” servers but there is a definite place for them. I could see using them immediately for developers and even some  testing. Even so, I would be inclined to continue using a standard Linux distro AMI and setting up my own database servers.

No matter your brand of database, you should be paying attention the happenings in the cloud services space. Over the next 3 – 5 years 90% or more of you will be using a service such as Amazon’s on a regular basis to perform some or all of  your daily DBA or developer tasks. You need to understand both the advantages and the limitations of such services.

Jeremy Zawodny wrote a good overview of some of the current crop of open source “NoSQL” database options here.

OS Database Magazine will be visiting the No:SQL{East} Conference which runs October 28th – 30th. Your editor will be on hand Wednesday night and Thursday taking in some talks and interviewing people for the podcast. If you are in the Southeast come join the fun in Atlanta at Georgia Tech. Send me an email if you want to catch up.

Hey everyone,

I have had an absolutely overwhelming response to my posts about call for articles for the OSDB Mag Fall issue. So much response that for the first time I am going to have to defer some articles until the next issue in January.

However, there is one small piece to the puzzle that I am still missing. I would really like to include a feature-length article ( 6 – 8 pages) on Drizzle since the planned Bell milestone is fast approaching. The article can cover the history of Drizzle, its purpose and future plans. You can walk through the setup of Drizzle and how to interact with it.  There is plenty of material to cover for 6 – 8 pages. I really need someone from the Drizzle community to step forward for this article. It is a great opportunity to reach a large audience who have not necessarily had any contact with Drizzle. Even modest fame and a little fortune  Details on the recent changes in OSDB Magazine can be found in this post.

This article would be a great complement to the podcast interview I did with Brian Aker kicking off the OSDB podcast back in July.

I can be reached at editor@osdbzine.net. I need to hear from you as soon as possible as the articles need to be finished by the end of the month.

thanks,

keith

July brought the first issue of Open Source Database Magazine and it was a resounding success. Our download count has skyrocketed. I was blown away when I checked my stats after the first two days of release and there were almost three times as many downloads as I had ever had of any of the previous issues of MySQL Magazine. Thanks to those who participated by contributing articles; I couldn’t have done it without you. The feedback I have received is that the change in direction has been embraced by the open source database community.

I published the first OSDB podcast a few days after the release of the magazine. Even though it was my first attempt at podcasting I thought it went well. There are still some technical rough edges I am working on, but the discussion with Brian Aker was just incredible. If you haven’t heard it yet, you are missing a treat. The next podcast which will be released around mid-November will feature Josh Berkus of Postgres fame.

continue reading…

Hey everyone,

I finally took found the time to set up a blog for Open Source Database Magazine. Here I will be posting information about calls for articles, new releases of the magazine and such.  For those who don’t know, Open Source Database Magazine is a online magazine that is devoted to technical articles about any of the available open source-licensed databases.

Interested in MySQL, Postgres or Drizzle? You will find them here. What about SQLite, Hadoop and CouchDB? Those also. If it is a database, and has an open source license we will discuss it here.

thanks,

keith