Archive for April 2013

Testing Fedora 19

Today I downloaded Fedora 19 alpha to give it a spin. Some quick notes.

You can get MySQL by asking for the package community-mysql-server. This is 5.5.31. If you ask for stock “mysql” (i.e. yum install mysql-server), you automatically get MariaDB 5.5.30 (mariadb-server).

Fedora 19 runs systemd, so there is no longer /etc/init.d/mysql to start/stop/restart. So just do systemctl enable mysqld.service. Then perform: systemctl start mysqld.service. Replace start with: stop/status too. You can disable it too if you want.

MariaDB 10.0.2 compiles cleanly on Fedora 19 with gcc-4.8. Just perform: yum install bzr gzip tar gcc gcc-c++ make libtool bison ncurses-devel zlib-devel automake autoconf cmake. Get the source code (I just downloaded it). Do BUILD/compile-pentium64-max. Wait. Run make test. Enjoy. Refer to build environment setup, generic build instructions.

If running in a VM, set aside 15GB to ensure you always have sufficient space (I personally use 20GB as I like to test various upgrade scenarios too.

HTML5 app cache

On my Nexus 7 today, I got this message from the FT app: FT could not be opened because it is not connected to the Internet. This is an odd error message.

The best way to fix this? Clear the cache in Android (just for the application). Or you can Force Stop the application afterwards and it should restart just fine.

Why? There are issues with HTML5 app cache. Some resources: Debugging HTML5 Offline Application Cache, Fixing app cache from the FT themselves, and some sensible comments at Stack Overflow.

A trip to the Microsoft Store

Today instead of stepping into the Apple Store on Stockton St, I decided to walk past it and head to look for the Microsoft Store. It is inside the Westfield San Francisco mall. There are plenty of signs to tell you its next to Bloomingdales on the 2nd floor. 

I finally reach the store and its bright. There’s lots of light to ensure that the place is bright. It reminds me very much of an Apple Store – the clothing worn by staff look like I stepped into an Apple Store. The layout is very similar as well.

Staff are aplenty. They are very eager to help you. People are also aplenty. Yes — many people are interested in getting their hands on devices.

I played with a Surface RT with Windows. My pod had a Touch Cover. I tried typing coherently but it seems that every substantial sentence had about one or two errors. Considering the Type Cover isn’t far off in terms of price, I don’t know who will buy the Touch Cover. It takes a little while to get used to the Metro interface, but for some reason, you get a stock Windows look & feel when its time to launch applications like Word. Hmm. This isn’t a tablet. This isn’t a laptop. It’s some kind of hybrid. I’m not so sure, considering I’ve been using “modern” tablets since the iPad first came out.

Then I moved over to a laptop. This was one made by Asus. I saw a stylus next to it, so I tried touching the screen. A kind store employee told me that this particular laptop/tablet hybrid was weird, and closed the lid, only to reveal the tablet at the back of the regular screen. That was touch screen and you could use the stylus or your finger. What an odd hybrid!

I went back to the Surface RT with Windows to see the store employee demoing it to two people. When asked what they used at home, they said they had a MacBook Pro. Oops. The employee could have done a better job at understanding what the Finder, etc. was all about, but he had no clue about the Mac. Which makes it really hard to sell to switchers, especially if you’re selling the Surface RT with Windows as a laptop replacement! During the demo, he tried to show how cool the augmented reality maps were to work, but when he started moving it around and turning, the display didn’t turn, so the demo failed. Poor chap.

There were many devices and so many devices that are iMac lookalikes. I am impressed by all the makers of devices. There are other things for sale, like accessories. A small corner for Nokia exists too – to showcase their phones.

I saw many people checking their emails, doing things that they would do at a cybercafe. I wonder if they were treating it like a cybercafe?

A few takeaways:

  1. Real estate matters. Location, location, location. Apple is at street level. The Microsoft Store needs to tell you how to find it (inside Westfield, next to Bloomingdales on the 2nd floor).
  2. Teach the staff what the Mac is all about. It will help sell to switchers.
  3. Make sure canned demos exist. There’s nothing like a failing demo when you try to sell something.
  4. I didn’t check to see if there’s free WiFi in the store, but if there isn’t, make sure its like the Apple Store – this is one reliable thing you can find in any Apple store.

MHA & MariaDB Cassandra Interoperability talks

Together with Sergei Petrunia, we talked about MariaDB Cassandra Interoperability. Sergei has done wonderful work here and I plan to showcase more Cassandra integration going forward. It’s worth noting that Elena came up with the benchmarks for this talk as well.

Later, I gave a talk on MHA. Competing in a timeslot with Team Facebook‘s Q&A, I was surprised that we had a relatively good turnout in the talk. There were some interesting questions. I found many people still using MMM in production.

 

MariaDB 10.0 and What’s New With The Project

While we won’t be able to present an in-depth overview of MariaDB 10.0 & the project at the SkySQL Solutions Day, we did so at Percona Live Santa Clara 2013. Here are slides from our talk. We did a little show between Monty & me. Good thing we were right before lunch because we over-ran in terms of Q&A for quite some time.

Biggest MySQL related news in the last 24 hours, Day 2

Continuing on from yesterday, the biggest news that I’ve noted in the past 24 hours:

  1. The commitment from Oracle’s MySQL team to release a new GA about once every 24 months, with a Developer Milestone Release (DMR), with “GA quality” every 4-6 months. Tomas Ulin announced MySQL 5.7 DMR1 (milestone 11) [download, release notes, manual]. He also announced MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR2 [download, article]. Needless to say, 5.7’s code isn’t pushed yet to lp:mysql-server/5.7. Of notable mention were the statistics around MySQL 5.6 of worklogs, bugs fixed, etc.
  2. The MySQL Applier for Hadoop which uses the binlog API to stream to HDFS.
  3. The media was all over the SkySQL-Monty Program merger, so today its just links: TechCrunch, ZDNet, ArsTechnica, Wall Street Journal (WSJ), PC World, The H, and in one of my favourite newspapers, The Financial Times (FT).

Did I miss any other important announcements/news bits?


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