Using MySQL sandbox for testing
MySQL Sandbox is a great tool for quickly deploying test MySQL instances, particularly if your daily work involves diagnosing problems across multiple MySQL versions. Once you’ve downloaded it, it needs no installation. Just have a few MySQL binary releases at hand, and begin creating sandboxes in just a few seconds: ./make_sandbox mysql-5.0.77-linux-x86_64-glibc23.tar.gz or ./make_sandbox mysql-5.1.32-linux-x86_64-glibc23.tar.gz [...]
Using the ENUM data type to increase performance
While going through the DATA TYPES section of the Certification Study Guide, I was refreshed of the ENUM datatype, which I rarely use.
I usually create individual tables for enumerations, so that new values can be added with just an insert, or deprecated values can be marked as such.
However, today I got to think about the performance issues involved in all that joining, and how could an ENUM column improve a select.
MySQL Certification self study
I’m taking the MySQL Certification exams soon, and while I’d love to take advantage of official training, the closest classes near me will be in Buenos Aires (just a few hundred kilometers and an estuary away) in over a month, and I hope to be done with the Developer exams by then. So I’ll be [...]
Coding Buddies
Coding Horror always has insightfull articles, and this one on code peer reviews is no exception. Why is it that writers, musicians and, well, any respected and professional artist or scientist gets his/her work reviewed before it’s published, but the same isn’t true in IT? My guess? Most programmers aren’t neither artists, nor scientists. They’re [...]
highbase beta-0.9.4
Heavy testing, headphones with no music, lots of Sanchez Gran Reserva, headphones with Miles Davis, more testing, an updated Installation Guide, Charles Mingus & Eric Dolphy, and I still couldn’t get a Release Candidate out. Well, such is the life of the multi purpose hacker. Other people are always finding out new purposes for you, [...]
Generating random salts from bash
From the ‘just because it can be done’ column, here comes a handy shell script to generate random salts. So, without further ado, here it goes: #!/bin/bash [ $# -eq 0 ] && { echo “usage: salt <length>”>&2 exit } strings </dev/urandom | while read line; do echo $line | tr ‘\n\t ‘ $RANDOM:0:1 >> [...]
I love playing Monopoly
This is the latest speed test I run against Santiago de Chile, where a lonely database server is waiting for my queries. Well, it’s got a lot of waiting to do. This results are from a 2048 down /256 up Kb/s connection for which I pay U$S 52/monthly. Yeah, I feel your envy already. The [...]
Erlybird 0.17.0 released
Yep, I’m really late for this. However, I didn’t want to let it pass. I checked up on erlybird a couple of times before, but it was only available as a source project, and you needed a particular netbeans version in order to build the module. I’m as geek as it gets, but I’m also [...]
Rewriting Highbase in Erlang
Why? Highbase is currently comprised of several shell scripts and some C code. It’s actually a good project (talk about self promotion) that hasn’t reached a stable release yet just because It hasn’t been tested enough in production environments I’ve been amazingly busy during the last years. Lots of work, and lots of parenting in [...]
Intrusion detection at the application level, for PHP
Here’s phpids, an Intrusion Detection System for PHP. According to the site, it aims to counter XSS, SQL Injection, header injection, directory traversal, RFE/LFI, DoS and LDAP attacks, and unknown attack patterns, through it’s Centrifuge component. Installation is simple. Just download it, copy the lib directory to a directory in your project structure, or add [...]
