Happy Halloween! – well by the time you read this it will be more – Remember, remember the 5th of November!. So what’s been happening?
Well I spent the last month getting to grips with DB2 – why I hear you ask?.
You shouldn’t keep all your eggs in one basket, and there were rumors that DB2 might become Open Source at some point (or not). Anyway even if that never happens there is a lot to learn from the original DBMS and with DB2 Express-C available for free there’s nothing to stop your Open Source app taking advantage of that fact. Besides competition is a good thing.
Anyway not forgetting my favorite DBMS, I managed to find time to spend a morning at the 4th MySQL Conference in London where the keynote opened to – here comes the sun – cute. There was a lot of emphasis on the fact that MySQL was not being written to run faster on Solaris (even though I got the impression that it does, with features like ZFS and snappy 64bit libraries outlined during the second session).
It was a relief to hear that MySQL 5.1 will finally go GA during the first week in December along with the new query analyzer (aka proxy). I couldn’t help get the feeling of déjà vu out of my head, after all it was only last October that I remember seeing some very similar slides – anyway fingers crossed for a December release!.
My only disappointment at the conference was hearing that the auditing / security features would not make an appearance until after 2010? (TBD), frustrating especially with items like PCI compliance high on everyones agenda. Still with a little ingenuity and help from the MySQL Proxy Server you can roll your own auditing solution and customise it to your own needs (is there anything proxy can’t do 
).
Speaking of which it looks like the Proxy Server will finally hit GA early next year in the form of the MySQL Load Balancer. In fact it is planned to make an appearance in December in the form of the Query Analyzer – yes that’s based on the Proxy too!. Time to brush up on your Lua and check out the samples over at the Forge.
The big news this October/November goes to the G1, the first phone to take advantage of Android: a complete, open, and free mobile platform.
My own G1 adventure started last Thursday with a call to T-Mobile who were keen to dispatch my phone next day, but not so keen to deliver it to my workplace. Not a problem, I could wait till the weekend even if it meant paying £6 for delivery.
Saturday morning came and went with no sign of a Royal Mail van and after a 20 minute call to T-Mobile it seemed I would not be getting my G1 anytime soon. I listened to several explanations ranging from the order not going through to high demand exhausting stock. No offer of apology or even a discount of any kind!.
Not one to accept lame excuses I asked for the order to be cancelled and fought for another 15 minutes with a customer service rep who claimed the order could not be cancelled over the phone. His manager however had no problem canceling the order – funny that eh. A quick Google search confirmed my thoughts!.
My local T-Mobile shop was not much help either claiming that the plan I had accepted on Thursday no longer existed on Saturday due to it now being November. They did however have the G1 in stock, well they did until I decided to purchase it, then it seemed Monday was the earliest I could get one. I picked mine up on Sunday from Bluewater and even got the plan that no longer existed this month…
The fun didn’t end there though as it was about 5 minutes after opening the phone that I managed to lock the SIM while trying to set-up the password protection – PUK locked please contact customer services – do I have to I thought!. 30 minutes later the customer services rep had no idea how we could unlock the phone and instead decided to give me my PUK code along with the phone number for HTC‘s customer services (it’s their problem not T-Mobile’s) – which as you may have guessed already happened to be closed at the weekend. Maybe Google could help!.
Another quick search and it seemed I was not the only one with this problem and the only answer so far was to place the sim in another phone to enter the PUK code and unlock the SIM. Simple when you know how! (and you have a spare mobile to hand). Anyway my phone is now unlocked and I’m ready to start exploring Android. I did try logging into the My T-Mobile site to register my phone etc however the link failed – no surprises there.
As with most Open Source projects it is the community that provides the support and with the G1 / Android this is no exception. If you want to learn more about Android on the G1 don’t waste your time contacting T-Mobile, instead head on over to the website or forum and marvel at what is no doubt going to be THE mobile platform of 2009. All I need to do now is think up an idea for an app…..
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