Xaprb

The Maatkit toolkit for MySQL has a lot of functionality that’s common across the tools. It’s not a good idea to document this in each tool’s man page, of course. So there is an overall maatkit man page. It explains concepts such as configuration file syntax. This and all the other Maatkit man pages are online.

Dr. Richard Hipp gave a talk at Southeast Linux Fest today on choosing an open-source database. He thinks that NoSQL is not a very good name for the new databases we’re seeing these days, so he proposed a new name: postmodern databases. Why postmodern?

• The absence of objective truth
• Queries return opinions, not facts

I thought this was the best proposal I’ve heard for an alternative to the NoSQL moniker. And this is not bashing — the absence of objective truth can actually be an enabling quality, not necessarily a drawback. There’s a lot to compliment about the new databases, and calling them NoSQL is really a disservice — like calling a car a horseless carriage.

If you’re near South Carolina next weekend, consider attending Southeast Linux Fest! There’s a list of illustrious speakers including several well-known in the database world: Joshua Drake and Andrew Dunstan (PostgreSQL), D. Richard Hipp (SQLite), and yes, yours truly (MySQL), plus a MySQL name that’s new to me: Brandon Checketts. There are a ton of non-database sessions too! Check out the full speaker & session list. This was a great show last year; I highly encourage everyone to attend.