Xaprb

If you’re like me, you’ve gotten tired of writing endless test cases for parsers that can understand the thousands of variations of text output by SHOW INNODB STATUS. I’ve decided to solve this issue once and for all by patching MySQL and InnoDB to output XML, the universal markup format, so tools can understand and manipulate it easily. Here’s a sample snippet:

<status><![CDATA[
=====================================
100320 15:46:24 INNODB MONITOR OUTPUT
=====================================
... text omitted, but you get the idea ...
]]>
</status>

PS: Yes, this is a late April Fool’s joke.

It has all played itself out according to Microsoft’s wishes. They have railroaded through a so-called standard for document representation, gotten it rubber-stamped by so-called standards bodies, and fought their way past all the objections of sensible people and companies. In the process, lots of developing nations have been steamrolled, too. Shame, shame, shame.