One of the unique elements of MySQL is the ability to use a different storage engine to store your data. You can even mix and match storage engines within the same database.
Busy New Year
Wow - if you hadn’t noticed, it’s been pretty quiet round here recently, and the reason is that things have simply been very busy. I’ve been churning out the IBM stuff (including some that hasn’t made it yet) - the main highlight is the big three-part tutorial series on using Application Virtualization as a grid-enabling solution (start with Application virtualization, Part 1: Level 1 - Abstracting your grid infrastructure). Part 3 should be coming out soon.
Also, things at MySQL are hectic - probably as best evidenced by posts like Slashdot | MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Open Sourced. One of the links embedded in there is the documentation on Falcon - written by yours truly - and accessible directly in the documentation The Falcon Storage Engine.
At the moment, I’m mostly working on Replication, some improvements to the APIs section (and some further updates for Connectors, now that C/ODBC 5 is on the way).
Hopefully things wont be as busy though; there’s a bunch of stuff to follow up on here.
Digital cost calculator
BT have come up with a Digital Cost Calculator, primarily to help drive traffic to their online backup service, BT Digital Vault.
The tool can provide a useful guide to how much it might cost to replace the items, although as detailed by Simon Perry at Digital-Lifestyles.info (BT Digital Cost Calculator: Value Your Digital Life - Digital-Lifestyles.info) the calculations are somewhat basic and flawed.
Backup guide resources
With the new year here, it's time to make some resolutions. How about making sure your backups are running nicely so you are protected for the rest of the year? Back in October, Computer ran a wonderful series of articles on making sure your backups are running smoothly, which I've collected together here for quick reference:
300GB on the move
We've just come back from a brief stay away, and of course I took my back-ups with me. One of those is a hard disk (2.5") which at 60GB is just about large enough to carry a copy of all my files and stuff which isn't otherwise archived away on DVD (onsite and offsite). The problem is that 60GB is not enough for everything I might want to store.
Meanwhile, in my MacBook Pro, 120GB sounded like a lot, but by the time you include the OS, the files I use regularly and all the virtual machines (through the always excellent Parallels), it really doesn't seem like a lot.
New Year resolutions
Happy New Year for 2007 to everybody!
As is the custom, I thought I'd write down a few of my own personal resolutions (computer/IT related, of course) to serve as both inspiration and information:
- Use less electricity - not just for the green reason, but also for the bottom line in the electricity bill, which does me no favours either. I'm going to try and switch things off when I'm not using them, and I'm going to get out of the habit of leaving phone and laptop chargers on when I don't need them.
- Dispose of old equipment - after the recent consolidation, plus efforts earlier last year, I have a considerable amount of equipment just lying around. It all works, which means I need to find good homes for it all, either by selling it on eBay, or by donating it to someone who could use it.
Christmas Sharon
Cats and ice cream
Bedrooms should be offline
There's a wonderful little article at the Globe and Mail (Why online should be off limits in the bedroom) about how laptops should be kept out of the bed. The article talks about some more personal reasons why not using your laptop in the bedroom is a good idea, but frankly I think there are some more sensible reasons.
First up, I think it's rude. Reading is a comparatively silent activity, and generally non-intrusive, but using a laptop is far from silent, and there's always the temptation to download a movie or watch a video short. Your partner may want to sleep and using a notebook is probably not going to help.
Application virtualization, Part 2: Level 2 — Understanding your virtualized environment
The second part of my in-depth look at the role of application virtualization techniques that can be used to develop, or adapt existing, applications for use within a grid environment. Part 2 looks at the second level of the virtualization process - building an environment in which our virtualized application can execute.
In Part 1, we examine how virtualization within an application structure can be used to turn an application from a stand-alone solution into one that can be adapted for use within a grid.
This tutorial covers the creation and components of the new grid environment required for your new virtualized application to operate within a grid. Whether you have virtualized your entire application, or virtualized individual components of the application, they both need the same range of additional components — grid manager, security and other elements — to operate. With these requirements in mind, you need to examine how information and work might be distributed throughout the grid. There are a number of potential models that can be used, and we’ll look at each of these solutions and how they work with our virtualized application.
In this tutorial, we’re going to consider all these points and build a number of theoretical models that can be used with a virtualized application.
Read Application virtualization, Part 2: Level 2 — Understanding your virtualized environment