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Archive for July, 2007

20 Indispensible MySQL Resources

July 28th, 2007

Anyone who’s spent more than 5 minutes on the MySQL documentation will realise it leaves a lot to be desired. The same goes for many of the 3rd party apps latched onto this platform which offer mediocre functionality and anything beyind the basic comes at a huge premium.Well here’s a set of 20 resources, tools, articles that hope to break that and bring it all under one roof. Enjoy.

Design & Administration Tools

MyDB Studio – Makes a useful administration app for MySQL and also has some design capabilities such as the SELECT wizard to help with overly complicated queries.
SQLYog – Provides an excellent GUI for designing and administrating you MySQL database.
WWW SQL Designer – A really funky Ajax database designer. It has many features normally only available in offline apps. It’s got a lot of promise although its still being very actively developed it’s stable and fast.
OpenOffice.org Base – I know its certainly an unusual one to incude in the list but OpenOffice Base does have good support for working on a MySQL system using its Java interface. Worth a look but if you have a huge database then it can take a performance knock.
AutoMySQLBackup – Why go to the special effort of producing scripts to backup when you can use this.
PHPMyAdmin – Been around for years and still going strong. Its not the most speedy when handling large sets of data (try offline apps such as SQLYog or MyDB) but its got every functionality you can shake a stick at.

Security Tools

SQLIer – A SQL injection tool which you provide a URL and it does all it can to perform SQL injection.
SQLMap – A blind SQL injection tool. It provides support for PostgreSQL, MSSQL as well as MySQL.
Absinthe – An application which is available on Linux and Windows. It provides MySQL injection brute forcing on your server.
SQID – SQL Injection Digger was created in Ruby as a command-line tool for brute force SQL injection testing.

Optimising MySQL

MySQL Performace Blog – For regularly updated information on optimising your MySQL install.
SQL Commandments – 25 rules of optimized database design.
10 Tips on Optimizing MySQL – From 20bits.
Another 10 Tips – They just keep on trucking with those optimisation tips.

Knowledge

MySQL Tutorials – Great collection of MySQL tutorials.
MySQL Cheat Sheet – Provided by the prolific producer of cheat sheets over at I Love Jack Daniels.
10 Common Mistakes of MySQL Design – Learn what not to do!
MySQL Clustering How-To – Exactly what it says.
MySQL Master-to-Master Replication – If you need to setup replication in a ring then this is your place.
MySQL vs. Postgre – Its good to compare.

If you think I’ve missed anything off then leave a note in the comments and I’ll make the list grow.

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Posted in mysql

Peepcode Killer

July 28th, 2007

Railscasts - This can’t be good for Peepcodes sign ups? Competition is all good though – especially when we start getting something for nothing. mmmmmm knowledge!

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[UPDATE: As you’ll see form the comments it looks like RailsCast is sponsored by PeepCode so maybe its not a killer but a parent? Surrogate mother? Either way - knowledge and more of it is all good as far as I’m concerned.]

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Posted in rails, ruby

Ignore the User

July 25th, 2007

I vaguely remember reading something about this in the essays that 37Signals released some time ago called Getting Real. Now as it was many moons ago and the human mind is fantastic at mangling memory I could have got this completely the wrong way around but here’s my take on it….

At the company I work the developers handle a large array of tasks form developing, support, system administration, etc. We do it all and it keeps us on our toes and makes the job damn interesting. Sometimes it can get a bit hectic though and users come at you from every angle which can cause a lot of stress and increasing tempers.

That was until the other day when I decided to stop listening – switch off – ignore them.

REALLY hard, especially when you have a habit of being a tech saint and my colleagues and I are all walkovers when it comes to helping people out – I guess geeks just can’t say no to helping. Like hotshot heroes we are!

So what happens when a user calls, IM’s, speaks to you? Politely acknowledge, say you’ll see if you can get to it and leave it at that. When I first tried this Iit went completely against nature. I was getting visions of the company building collapsing, people dying, fires burning children, vampires feeding, death, destruction….anyway.

None of that happened and amazingly 90% of the problems that were reported to you cleared themselves up. When an “IT Guy” is a phone call away its all too easy to jump on the phone and call them up for absolutely everything. When they realise you don’t come immediately they start using their own head and most things right themselves 5 mins after they speak to you.

So you may still think – But if its REALLY important you can’t just ignore it. Yes, yes you can. Because this is where Getting Real comes in. I remember back then that it said something about your users being your spec list. If somethings important they will remind you, constantly, repeatedly and increasingly loudly. Now if the same user comes to you 5, 10, 15mins later with the same issue then you know its serious and it can’t be sorted without your input. This happens a minority of times.

Eventually you’ll realise you can get more work done on the important tasks rather than reacting on ‘urgent’ tasks. Now isn’t that one of the habits of 7 Highly Effective People?

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Posted in agility

Tags: agility

Slicehost

July 24th, 2007

It may be a bit premature posting about a host when I haven’t even moved any of my sites over to them yet but I’m just utterly besotted with everything at Slicehost. Made more for the geek wanting a VPS than a rank beginner they provide some great features, a really friendly & energetic community and knowledgeable people behind the scenes (not so with certain other hosting companies I’ve experienced).