Oracle + Open Source

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review: MySQL Cookbook

Nov 14

Posted by Sean Hull in mysql, oreilly, review | No Comments

Last year O’Reilly released the 2nd Edition of the  MySQL Cookbook by Paul DuBois.  You can read my review here.

Whenever a publisher releases a 2nd Edition of a book, you know it was well received the first time around.  So that’s a good sign that the material has gotten people buying.  I would say in the computer reference and howto market, that’s a very good indication that the material is well written and relevant.  I certainly found it to be the case with this title.

If you’re looking for a quick & no nonsense howto book on MySQL development, look no further.  The book focuses on Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and Java as examples.  So if you’re doing development, specifically web development, you’ll get a lot out of this title.

review: High Performance MySQL 2nd Ed.

Nov 13

Posted by Sean Hull in high availability, migration, mysql, open-source, oreilly, replication, review | No Comments

I just finished reading the recently released 2nd Edition of High Performance MySQL by Baron Schwartz, Peter Zaitsev, Vadim Tkachenko, Jeremy Zawodny, Arjen Lentz & Derek Balling.  I’ve posted a review here on Amazon.

Wow, that’s quite a list of authors, but when you look at the material, you see why.  This book is a very indepth look at the MySQL server.  Intended for the intermediate to advanced DBAs and developers who want to know the inner workings of the server, as well as how to use many of it’s advanced features.

For instance the chapter on replication was quite good.  Given that you probably setup replication in five minutes, and are wondering weeks or months later why it’s not working, this chapter will give you some answers.  Using non-deterministic functions?  Mixing MyISAM and InnoDB tables in the same transactions?  Seeing some errors in your slave error log that don’t make sense?  After  finding out that there is something wrong, you may be more surprised that your slave can be out of sync with the master, and not even let you know about it.  The chapter recommends Maatkit’s mk-table-checksum as an assistant to identifying these problems.

All in all the book is superb, so take a look at the review for details, and go get yourself a copy!!

review: Backup & Recovery by W. Curtis Preston

Oct 22

Posted by Sean Hull in mysql, open-source, oracle, review | 1 Comment

Just finished up O’Reilly’s Backup & Recovery by W. Curtis Preston.  The title is wide-reaching, covering backups at the operating system as well as on all the popular database platforms, including Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, Sybase, SQL Server and DB2.  Preston has an amazing grasp of a spectrum of technologies and platforms, and as an Oracle & MySQL DBA myself, I’d use this as my backup reference text any day.

I’ve posted my review of Backup and Recovery over at Amazon.

review: Oracle Essentials 11g – O’Reilly

Oct 20

Posted by Sean Hull in oreilly, review | No Comments

Just had a chance to read O’Reilly’s introductory book on Oracle 11g, Oracle Essentials.  I thought it was quite good and gave it four out of five stars.  Take a look at my review of Oracle Essentials on Amazon.com.

The book covers a wide range of topics, and is one part new features, one part Oracle 101, and one part summary of all of the Oracle products.  It is primarily targeted to DBAs, Developers and System Administrators, albeit on the novice side, however it’s writing style, and technical depth are not unweildy, so IT managers, and business users can surely learn a lot from this book as well.  The writing style is quite good, and overall it is an enjoyable read.