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

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

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.

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

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.

Now on to the next issue. If you interested in writing about any of the open source databases send me an email with an article idea. Using SQLite for a programming project? Send me an abstract. Have an idea about writing about your experiences with MySQL on the Amazon cloud? That sounds like a good idea! What about Drizzle, Hadoop,  CouchDB, Firebird and Postgres? I am sure I have managed to leave one or more systems out. Any database system that uses an open source license is fair game. One specific article I am looking for a feature-length (6+ pages) article on Drizzle for the Fall issue.

I need to hear from you by October the 5th with any proposals and the article needs to be done by October the 30th. Just email me at editor@osdbzine.net.

Because of the demand, beginning with the January issue I will be producing an issue every other month instead of every three months.

If you are polishing up a good blog post on some experience in the last month consider delaying it a bit and sending a proposal to me.  In case you didn’t know OSDB Mag pays for articles. Not only will you probably get much wider exposure in the magazine you will get paid for it.

Want a regular gig? I am looking for some people who want to commit to columns on specific areas.

Now for some changes. You might not have noticed, but there were no advertisements in the summer issue. I have had advertisers in each issue ever since I began working with them in the spring of last year. Since the magazine was free it was the only way to pay authors for their hard work. Well, the recession has taken its toll and one by one the advertisers have dropped by the wayside. I have always charged the same rates even though our readership has grown with every issue. If anything, the advertisers have received more of a bargain as time has passed. Just to be clear, I don’t blame them. It is just the times we are in right now.

Unfortunately I don’t think this situation is going to change anytime soon. This is happening at the most inopportune time when interest in the magazine is rising.  In addition, I want to expand the content and increase the quality of the magazine.  I am already spending a great deal of  time on the magazine and don’t want to cut back. Unfortunately I can not continue to pay the authors out of my pocket which is what is currently happening.

For months I have been debating charging for the magazine. I have flipped and flopped on this issue all year. Well, my hand has been forced. I can either stop doing the magazine or start charging for it. Since I think there is a good deal of interest in a quality product that covers open source databases I have chosen to begin charging with the fall issue.

The first issue of OSDB was 26 pages in length. I will commit that any issue that you pay for will be at least that length. My goal is for each issue to be 40 pages. Cost will be $3.95 by Paypal for one issue or $19.95 for a year (6 issues). Less than the cost of a Starbucks for so much quality content!

I am going to step out and commit to paying authors even more than what I have in the past. Payment will range from $50 for book reviews, $100 for columns and regular articles to $150 for feature length articles.

thanks,

keith

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