Yesterday I posted about the results of the EnterpriseDB open source survey. In that post, I said:

I’d like to see the survey again and compare the results to the survey itself.

I discovered that, as of right now, the survey is still online.

Still no information as to when, or if, the entire survey results will be released. That’s what I am most interested in.

LewisC

Technorati : database, enterprisedb, open source, postgres

EnterpriseDB announced the results of the survey they did a few months ago at OSCON. Now, take the results with a grain of salt as it was done by EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB is based on Postgres so there is a vested interest in making Postgres sound good. Results can be skewed depending on how the survey is worded, what options are available as answers and who the respondents are.

The results summary is available for free.

Some key facts:

500 respondents. The download page says “500 corporate IT leaders”. Or maybe, 500 open source developers.

Only 9% of respondents indicated that they preferred commercial solutions over open source solutions.

Well, I am no longer working for EnterpriseDB. It was fun while it lasted but it’s over so I am moving on. I found a new job, locally. It’s pure Oracle and I will get to use Real Application Clusters in a production environment. That’s something I haven’t done in the past so I am looking forward to it. It’s also a java, .net and Oracle Forms shop and they are doing some interesting things with telecommunications and SMS.

From now on, I will only need to travel for conferences. No more trips to New Jersey. That’s kind of a drag as I was almost at elite status on Continental.

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

Looks like I have a new boss. Actually, it looks like my boss’s boss has a new boss.

I’d like to personally welcome Ed Boyajian to EnterpriseDB. Looks like he has quite a bit of experience with OSS and monetizing software solutions. He’s been an executive at Redhat for a long time. 6 years in his last position but in many other positions before that.

We (EnterpriseDB employees) have known this was coming for a while now. I knew Andy and the board were looking when I was hired. I just now learned the name of the chosen, though.

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

The datastore in Postgres (which is what Advanced Server is based on) is quite a bit different than the way Oracle stores data. Gone are the usual logical storage components. Data blocks, extents and segments just don’t exist in a Postgres database. Actually, segments do exist when a table gets bigger than 1GB but that’s a story for a different entry.

Postgres stores data as files and directories. Tablespaces are directories and tables (and indexes) are files inside that directory. Postgres ships with two tablespaces installed by default: pg_default and pg_global. The tablespaces cannot be changed or dropped.

EnterpriseDB News at Blogspot

Chris Keene, the CEO for Wavemaker just blogged that combining Wavemaker and EnterpriseDB just got easier. Wavemaker has a new version that has out of the box support for both Postgres and EnterpriseDB.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my first day of Wavemaker training. I still haven’t found time to start day two but now that Wavemaker supports EnterpriseDB, I’ll probably redo day 1 using Advanced Server instead of MySQL. I could have done it before since it already supported Postgres and EnterpriseDB via a manual configuration.

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

I mentioned the other day that I was playing with a new GUI builder from an EnterpriseDB partner, Wavemaker. Wavemaker, in addition to providing the software, provides some training that is downloadable from the web site.

This training is a two day basics course in powerpoint format. I would guess that this is what they use for instructor led training and they just made this available to the public. Anyway, I decided to see how good the training was which in turn kind of tells me how easy wavemaker is to learn.

Day 1 includes 8 powerpoint presentations:

• Introduction
• Wavemaker Architecture
• Wavemaker Installation
• Wavemaker Studio Overview
• Page Designer Basics
• Wavemaker Data Model
• Service Components
• Data Widgets

Seeing as how I was already making some simple pages with the tool, I blew through the intro, the architecture and installation.

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

Today I will be writing about triggers. One of the questions I get fairly often is “what is the difference between a function, a procedure and a trigger?” I already wrote about functions and procedures in Learn Oracle: Procedures and Functions. You should probably read that one before you read this post.

What is a trigger?

A trigger is a special case of stored procedure that is fired during an event rather than being explicitly executed. A function or a procedure can be called from a command line or from within a different calling program.

Bind variables are used to ease code maintenance and to save memory and processing on the server. When you save memory and processing power, you improve the overall performance of the server. The inner details of how this saves memory has been enumerated in other places on the web. This article is designed to help developers users bind variables when running queries against Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

What are bind variables?

The easiest way to think of a bind variable is to consider it just another variable. Instead of it being a variable to be used by your application (and whatever language you happen to be using), think of it as a variable to be used by SQL.

LewisC’s An Expert’s Guide To Oracle Technology

The latest release of the EnterpriseDB database, Postgres Plus Advanced Server (AS) 8.3, includes additional Oracle compatibility features. Two of those new features are DBMS_PIPE and DBMS_ALERT. Old Oracle hands will recognize those two packages that are used for interprocess communication. This post is a quick tutorial on using these two features. If you’ve used them in Oracle, you would have no problem using them in AS.

DBMS_ALERT

DBMS_ALERT allows you to send an alert to any processes that are registered to hear (listen) that alert. The listening process can register to hear multiple alerts.

Someone recently posted a question in the Postgres Forums about how to call a package in Advanced Server. He also had a question about how to call a packaged procedure in a specific schema.

Here is my reply to the question:

You can’t actually execute packages. You execute the procedures or functions in them. Here is some code to execute a procedure in a package. I am using public as the schema name. If you want to execute a procedure in a user’s schema, just replace public with the user’s name.

using System;using System.Data;using EnterpriseDB.EDBClient;

namespace ConsoleApplication2{    class Program    {        static void Main(string[] args)        {            EDBConnection conn =               new EDBConnection(                     "Server=localhost;" +                     "Port=5444;" +                     "User Id=enterprisedb;" +                     "Password=enterprisedb;" +                     "Database=edb");

            conn.Open();            EDBCommand cmd = new EDBCommand();            cmd.Connection = conn;

            int vEmpId = 7876;            String query = "public.emp_admin.fire_emp(:e_id)";            cmd.CommandText = query;            cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

            EDBParameter prm = new EDBParameter(                             "e_id",                              EDBTypes.EDBDbType.Integer);

            cmd.Parameters.Add(prm);

            cmd.Parameters[0].Value = vEmpId;    

            cmd.Prepare();

            cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();

            conn.Close();        }    }}

.Net enterprisedb

In the past, your basic support for postgres has been mail groups. I’ve never been a big fan of mail groups. You have to subscribe to the group and usually you get tons of stuff you don’t really want. Worst of all, you either have to sort through it or filter it to a folder. I never seem to be able to keep up with the stuff I am interested in due to the clutter.

EnterpriseDB has had forums for a while but recently combined the postgres and advanced server forums into a single location. GridSQL also has it’s own forum.

I wrote about GridSQL and EnterpriseDB a while back. EnterpriseDB bought GridSQL (from Mason who now works at EnterpriseDB) and has been working to improve it. Yesterday, they announced that they are open sourcing it.

GridSQL is really for data warehousing but can be applied to some OLTP/reporting combination databases. What it does is take a query and spread it out to run in parallel against a set of cheap PCs. There is a controller machine, called a coordinator, that keeps track of what is running and where.

Because there is a central point of failure (the coordinator), it is not a high availability solution.

I’m doing a “Best Practices on Database Migration” webinar at ITToolbox.com March 12.

I’ll talk about ways to make your life easier when doing database migrations.

LewisC

oracle enterprisedb

I’m just back from a brisk walk around the Marriott World Center Resort in Orlando, FL.

What an amazing place! It is incredibly huge. I asked “How big?” when I was checking in and it has 2004 rooms, 265,000 square feet of meeting space, multiple pools (including some with waterfalls), at least one hot tub and a golf course. Oh yeah, and an alarm clock that doesn’t work. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’m here manning the EnterpriseDB booth with Derek Rodner and, my boss, Jim Mlodgenski. Jim is giving a presentation on Friday. We’re giving away copies of my book.

Apatar is a provider of open source software tools for the data integration market. Apatar provides data integration to the companies by offering provides support, training, and consulting services for its integration software solutions.

Apatar provides connectivity to EnterpriseDB, Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL, Sybase, DB2, MS Access, PostgreSQL, XML, InstantDB, Paradox, BorlandJDataStore, Csv, MS Excel, Qed, HSQL, Compiere ERP, SalesForce.Com, SugarCRM, Goldmine, any JDBC data sources and more.

The free Community Edition is available for download and provides plenty of functionality out of the box. There is a also an Enterprise Edition that provides some additional features.

EnterpriseDB’s CEO, Andy Astor, was named one of 13 “Top Leaders in Open Source Business” by LinuxWorld Magazine. EnterpriseDB was also recently named one of the “Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008″ by Linux Magazine.

This is good news for open source and for people looking to save money on database license fees.

EnterpriseDB sells the open source based Oracle compatible EnterpriseDB Advanced Server as well as a packaged Postgres implementation. EnterpriseDB also offers consulting and training.

oracle enterprisedb

EnterpriseDB Corp announced yesterday that they will be joining Amazon in the cloud. So what the heck does that mean?

Amazon’s cloud computing is also called the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute or Amazon EC2. EC2, when tied with Amazon’s cloud storage (Amazon S3), gives you cheap and easy scalability for your applications. Your computing power moves from your own data center and hardware to the “cloud”. You control the servers but they are virtual servers running somewhere else. You control access, you control what applications are running and who can use them. If you only need a trickle, you pay for a trickle.

If you’ve thought about buying the book, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference, you should check out A1Books.com. As of right now, 1/22/08, it’s going for $24.80 USD (Brand New).

Shipping would depend on your location.

LewisC

oracle enterprisedb

I posted this question on my Postgres Blog. Send me a note if you would be interested.

LewisC

oracle enterprisedb

Hi all. I’m going to be using Postgres and EnterpriseDB a lot more in the near future. I was wondering if there is a Tampa area, or central Florida, Postgres user group or if there might be interest in starting one. If not, maybe a general database user group. I know the local Oracle user group is very popular (and it’s a group I attend and enjoy) and I was hoping to have the same kind of thing for Postgres and EnterpriseDB.

I think a general database user group might be a good idea too.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about how I want to give away a few copies of my book. I will be at the SOUG meeting Thursday, Jan 24th here in Tampa. If you’re in the area, stop by. I’m going to have a drawing for a couple of copies that night.

That doesn’t really help those people who aren’t near by. So, I am going to ask 3 questions and the first two people to answer all three correctly will get a copy.

They won’t be hard to answer but the answers might require a little work.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about how I want to give away a few copies of my book. I will be at the SOUG meeting Thursday, Jan 24th here in Tampa. If you’re in the area, stop by. I’m going to have a drawing for a couple of copies that night.
That doesn’t really help those people who aren’t near by. So, I am going to ask 3 questions and the first two people to answer all three correctly will get a copy.

They won’t be hard to answer but the answers might require a little work.

Well, it’s taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the movie.

It’s kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year.

Well, it’s taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the movie.

It’s kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year.

Well, it’s taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the movie.

It’s kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year.

Well, it’s taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the movie.

It’s kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year.

Well, it’s taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan 2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is available. I’m glad I didn’t wait for the movie.

It’s kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning out to be a good year.

EnterpriseDB Advanced Server’s enterprise-class, cross-platform developer and DBA console now includes EDB*Plus, a command-line terminal interface that emulates Oracle’s SQL*Plus. Like SQL*Plus, EDB*Plus allows users to run SQL and PL/SQL commands interactively. Oracle users accustomed to SQL*Plus will find EDB*Plus immediately familiar. In addition, EnterpriseDB’s new EDB*Loader emulates Oracle’s SQL*Loader and provides even deeper compatibility.

EnterpriseDB Advanced Server 8.3 adds several new features that enhance the database’s ability to run, unchanged, applications written for Oracle. For example, there are more than 20 new Oracle-compatible system views, Oracle-compatible packages now support comments, and ROWNUM can now be used in sub-queries and views. In addition, EnterpriseDB’s new bulk binding feature, which allows collections of SQL statements to be collected and run together to improve performance, further improves Oracle compatibility.

Other updates to the new software include:

• A DBA monitoring console that provides real-time charting for CPU and memory usage, disk I/O, and cache hit ratios across multiple EnterpriseDB databases

• Support for embedded hints, which can alter program execution

• Transaction error recovery support, which enables implicit statement-level transactions

• Updateable cursors

• Definer/invoker rights to provide controlled access to database objects

oracle enterprisedb

I was at the EnterpriseDB web site recently and noticed that the downloads have changed a bit. I no longer see a download for EnterpriseDB Express. If you remember a while back, I had found an annoyance with the installation of the express version.

Now you go right to the advance server download and get a messsage.

You have downloaded EnterpriseDB Advanced Server. Currently, EnterpriseDB Advanced Server 8.2 requires a Product Key in order to use the software above 1 CPU, 1 GB of memory, and 6GB of data.