Datebase miscellany

MySQL Gotchas makes for some interesting reading. I was particularly intrigued to read that an ALTER on an InnoDB table causes the table to be rebuilt. Certainly, ALTER statements are going to affect database performance, but this is definitely a Gotcha! operation. [via random($foo)]

Oracle 10g Early Adopters Release 2 (10.1.0.3) was released for MacOS X on Thursday. 10g is supposed to be the first production release certified for MacOS, and Apple and Oracle have been doing a grand tour to promote it. All the PR talks about 10.3 (Panther) Server but it will likely run under normal Panther installations (it's really required to have the DB available locally if you're trying to create or debug code when removed the net; on a plane, in a train or carpool PowerBooks rule) as it does today. We're using in some fashion or another every database I have installed (Oracle, MySQL, BDB, SQLite) except PostgreSQL (and I'm reasonably sure someone is using that somewhere). It's one of the drawbacks to growth by acquisition and merger; lots and lots of variety but it's also a positive so I can't complain too much. Today, we're running the 9i developer release on all kinds of hardware including a bunch of PowerBooks.

I don't remember where I saw this but Berkeley DB Java Edition is now available. Frankly, I don't get it. The press release indicates that they created a whole new BDB version in Java while the world was waiting on them to get around to creating a decent JDBC driver (that would be news). The Berkeley Java API was a complete waste of time (as some co-workers found out last summer and fall) and the folks at Sleepycat Software don't seem to get it. No one wanted a whole new DB which needs to be shaken down from top to bottom, they wanted a rational and sane Java oriented API to the existing DB. JDBC is where Java developers live.

Finally, the fist SQLite 3.0 alpha was released last week. SQLite seems to be the best choice available today for desktop application developers who need to bundle a high performance DB layer with their application. Everyone I've talked to who has done some serious work with the DB has been impressed with the performance. NetNewsWire is the only commercial application that I'm aware of using today, but I'm sure the list is going to grow quickly.