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Blogs ยป Archive for April 14th, 2004
MySQL Evolves into Big Iron
Often the premium database providers used by web developers (among many others) are called “big iron” for their sheer capacity and scale. These would be IBM DB2, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server (and possibly Sybase).
MySQL is now joining their ranks, announcing today at their users conference in Florida the first fully open source clustering solution, aptly called MySQL Cluster. The firm states this new solution will provide 99.9999% availability for those needing redundancy for critical applications such as e-commerce solutions and more.
Unique to this cluster solution is the dual licensing. Web developers of all sizes will be able to leverage MySQL Cluster under the GPL open source license without cost, while those needing commercial support can opt for the purchased license. This opens up development environments that can now test clustering without the cost of acquiring big iron database licensing (even development licenses from some providers can run between $400 and $1000).
Key to keeping the costs low are hardware requirements. MySQL leveraged the ability to run Linux on standard hardware. This should further seal the appeal to web developers of all sizes. Hence, use of typical Linux servers with decent RPM hard drives …
PHP Comes of Age
Oracle (yes Oracle) have an interesting article up titled PHP Comes of Age which reflects on PHP’s past and makes some insightful observations on “Culture Clash”, PHP being, in many ways, a meeting point for programmers of many backgrounds.
The signs of PHP’s growing maturity and acceptance are definately in the wind. If you believe in straw polls, TIOBE’s Programming Community Index places PHP as the forth most popular programming language, after Java, C and C++ (that index is based on Google searches so take a big pinch of salt). From Oracle’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to PHP to JSR 223 and Zend’s planned US expansion, it seems like PHP has hit critical mass.
The points Philippe Lachaise makes on PHP’s culture are valid. How will long time PHP hackers cope with the switch from “outsiders” to “mainstream”? Will the meeting of different programming mindsets clash or harmonize? Time will tell…
Also: From C++ to PHP - another article by Philippe Lachaise
XPath 101
As an addition to my latest article, this entry will show you how to harness the power of XPath by example.
XPath is a query language for XML, akin to SQL for relational databases (ok, loosely akin!) which is used to extract nodes from an XML file.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
Here’s our XML file to parse:
Be Here Now
Oasis
$9.99
Heathen Chemistry
Oasis
$13.99
Let It Be
The Beatles
$12.99
We can use XPath queries through the XmlDocument.SelectNodes method to return a set of nodes matching our query. Let’s set this up:
string fileName = Server.MapPath(”catalog.xml”);
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(fileName);
Our XmlDocument is now ready to query. Rather than explain the specifics of the query language, I think its better to show by example. The full details of XPath can be found here.
OK, let’s select all the CDs in our catalog:
XmlNodeList cdNodes = doc.SelectNodes(”catalog/cd”);
Easy eh? Notice, we just write out the “path” …
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