Colin Charles Agenda

MySQL has till the 18th to review all the student applications we’ve had for the Google Summer of Code 2008.

We’ve had 48 applications (it was 49 before one withdrew), up from the 35 that we had last year – growth! Currently, we also have 3 non-MySQL’ers being mentors (this is expected to grow), and we’ve also invited the phpMyAdmin team to mentor folk with their projects in mind, as its a very popular web-based UI.

What really is interesting is that out of the 48 applications, 13 already have owners wanting them! That’s 13 mentors, ready to go with the early applicants, and this can only mean good news (i.e. more to come).

Let’s hope that Google provides us more than our previous 10 slots, as in the early stages, we already have a 27% approval rating of students and their projects. Interesting times ahead.

Technorati Tags: gsoc, gsoc2008, mysql, google, summer of code

Today I tried to register for LugRadio Live USA 2008, seeing that I will be in San Franciso this Friday. Apparently, their payment provider doesn’t like my IP address (or ISP).

Declined: We do not currently process transcations from the country your Internet Service Provider is located in.

Yes, I could login to a foreign VPN (servers in Sweden for my employer), or I could tunnel via SSH and use a SOCKS proxy to the various machines I have access to around the world. But I think that’s just too much effort, for silly Nochex. Welcome to the globalised 21st century.

Instead I’ve emailed Jono Bacon. I hope that suffices as a pre-registration. I can fork out the ten bucks in cash ;)

Technorati Tags: nochex, silly, ISP, ip, transactions, lugradio, lugradio live usa, ecommerce

Licensing tends to be a common question, when it comes to giving a talk on MySQL. More recently, some have asked me if MySQL will be relicensed under the CDDL? Some ask why we’re GPLv2 and not GPLv3 yet? And some, genuinely want to know the merits of writing for BSD-based software (PostgreSQL) or GPL-based software (MySQL).

While I am not a soothsayer, I am pretty sure we will not be relicensing MySQL under the CDDL (might make for a good April 1 joke though?). What seems like a logical progression is to probably go GPLv3, from our current GPLv2 stance.

And Sun supports the GPLv3 just as it does many other licenses. Take for example, the recently released Open Service Tag. Its released under a GPLv3 license. Contributing to it, requires signing the Sun Contributor’s Agreement (SCA), which is largely similar to MySQL’s current CLA.

So, what is Open Service Tag? Its a small application, that provides a network-based product identifier, and it speaks XML. You can tag a device, and the information automatically becomes available over a network. It looks like inventory management made easy. Read more at Steve Wilson’s blog entry, about IT asset tracking.

It runs on Linux, and Mac OS X (release notes don’t mention OS X 10.5, Leopard, but it worked on my laptop just fine), and soon it will run on Windows too.

I can envision myself using it, when my lab is setup again (still waiting for some furniture to arrive, so most computers are still in boxes), to keep track of what kind of hardware I own…

It probably helps the MySQL DBA or sys-admin keep track of large installations just as well. Asset management and tracking is important, in these days where IT budgets are being cut, and as IT becomes even more efficient (think virtualization, more cycles on newer hardware, et al). What do you currently use for asset management?

Technorati Tags: open service tag, sun, gplv3, mysql, licensing

A few months ago, I wrote about the issues you will face with installing MySQL on OS X 10.5, Leopard. I am pleased to inform everyone, that this problem has been fixed!

The bug in question, mysql#28854, clearly stated that the problem was with the PrefPane. On Valentine’s Day 2008, Alfredo Kojima (of Workbench fame) fixed the problem, and uploaded a new PrefPane, to ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/MySQL.prefPane-leopardfix.zip.

This fixes an incompatibility with the default shipped PrefPane. The new PrefPane also detects if the MySQL data directory (/usr/local/mysql/data) has the incorrect permissions (and if so, one should fix it).

So all Mac users, your first order of business is to download an appropriate MySQL from the MySQL 5.0 Downloads, and then download the new PrefPane.

Happy starting and stopping MySQL now, via System Preferences. Note that MySQL Enterprise 5.0.58 has already got this fix implemented. The current Community release is MySQL 5.0.51a, and does require the new PrefPane (and it will be fixed in the next release).

Technorati Tags: mysql, leopard, maxosx, bugs, prefpane

I was at yesterday’s MyOSS meetup, and the topic was on the Selenium Web Testing Framework, presented by Yuen-Chi Lian. Here are some notes, and hopefully the slides and code make it up to the website soon.

– Java guy, who is a MyJUG guy
– Employed by CustomWare Asia Pacific, and is experienced in JIRA, Confluence, and Mule (are they an Atlassian reseller?)
– He started web development using PHP. Didn’t do unit tests then. As he started to do web development again, 2 years ago, he found that JIRA guys used Selenium to test their web UI. He started Selenium, last week :)
– A Common Web Development flow: analysis, design, development, then its testing… Unit test, integration tests, and acceptance tests using Selenium
– for web UI testing, Selenium helps you invoke a JavaScript method, rather than clicking a button to trigger it… These tests can be recorded and scripted. You can do it in a simulated browser environment, or use a real user agent
– He hasn’t tested Sahi yet, but he thinks its better than Selenium, based on the blogs that he’s read
– Selenium can be integrated with Continuous Integration (CI)
– Lots of examples using Java and Ruby
– Imagine doing FOSS development, on the Windows platform. It actually looks scary…

Overall, a rather basic talk, with a highly motivated/dedicated speaker. This being my second talk that I’ve attended on Selenium (last year at the Ruby Conf), and now, its pretty cemented in my head that I’ve got to make use of it, the next time I write a web-front end. Oh, it has great Firefox integration, with the Web Developer Tools plugin…

After that, it was off to Pelita for dinner. This ended up becoming supper, and there was lots of chatter… Drive home was eventful – on the way to Puchong, to send KageSenshi back, got pulled over twice – once for a license inspection, once to find out where we were headed. Odd. This has never happened before.

Technorati Tags: selenium, web app testing, web qa, qa, ruby, rails, java, myoss, meetup