There was a toss up this week about whether it would be better to dig right in to the Linux HTML editors, or to wax poetic about setting up LAMP so that those choosing to go the content management system (CMS) route could test any changes they made with such editors on their local machines.
We ultimately decided to tackle setting up a LAMP testing ground. This will certainly not be necessary for every single person out there who just wants to put up a web site. If your site is not using PHP-driven content that interacts with or requires a database backend, and you just plan on designing static web pages, there is absolutely no need to do any of this.
If you are perfectly content to upload your site and integrate any supporting elements (once again, things like databases) live and on the web and make changes there, where it is possible that everyone can see your style sheet testing or things may be temporarily broken, you don't need to do this either.
Some people, though, really like to get things on their CMS tweaked to near perfection before releasing their content on the world. Other people need to know exactly what a dynamic site is going to look and act like before it goes live. The combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) makes this possible.
Yesterday a Reddit user posted a link that supposedly runs a time-consuming SQL query on the RIAA'a website. Of course the Reddit community began trying to stick it to the RIAA, and eventually someone may have deleted all of the site's content by exploiting a poorly configured web/database server with an SQL injection attack.
The site appears to be operating fine now, but we noticed it certainly wasn't fine yesterday (and TorrentFreak has screenshots of the site, sans content). Is it ironic that the RIAA uses free open-source software (OSS) such as PHP to run their website while hunting down people who allegedly don't pay for music? You'd expect something more sinister, like Karl Rove hand typing HTML pages in a dimly lit sarcophagus or, at least MS SQL/IIS.
If only they spent more time working to save themselves from cross-site scripting attacks and SQL injection instead of going after college students for downloading "My Humps."
Sun Microsystems has made a huge leap into the open-source market by purchasing MySQL AB, the company behind the wildly popular MySQL database, for $1 Billion in stocks and cash. In a humorously named blog post titled "Helping Dolphins Fly", Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Shwartz stated that Sun would not only support MySQL once the transaction is finalized, but they'll be throwing their engineering support behind making MySQL more efficient on Sun's software platform.
MySQL is a widely used database product. It is the database used behind many popular sites -- Facebook, Digg, and Google, among others. Sun has long been a proponent of open source software, up until this point Sun has promoted PostgreSQL as a favored database.
MySQL AB was about to seek an IPO offering. We think Sun got a good deal by giving MySQL AB a cool billion, but just hope the MySQL database continues to innovate and carry on it's reputation as a fantastic database platform.
Perhaps with the influx of $800 Million, MySQL can make the leap from your favorite website into the enterprise where the real money is. Some large corporations wouldn't touch a database product that doesn't have support behind it, but if MySQL has a good system in place -- and a sales team who've marketed inside the enterprise for years -- new customers are more likely to take the bait and ditch Oracle or Microsoft's SQL Server.
EasyPHP is a great little web server package, as you might expect, it has the usual LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack, with phpMyAdmin, and a few other things. The only issue you might have with the EasyPHP 1.8 release is that it uses PHP 4. This may not be a problem unless you really need some of those sweet new features from PHP5. No word yet on when the folks at EasyPHP will be including PHP5, but we hope it will be soon. The more web development you do in PHP, you start to want those new features more and more. If you need a PHP4 based web server for testing or other purposes, EasyPHP is great.
If you just can't get enough of that PHP5 goodness though, you're out of luck, especially for someone who doesn't want to go inserting PHP5 into EasyPHP and bringing the whole shebang down on their heads. There is a web server solution that includes PHP5 in a slim package that is seamless and you could almost say exciting. WAMP5 installs quick and does a kill job of it. It more accurately reflects the fact that this is Windows not Linux we're using, thus the WAMP name. A great part of WAMP is the built in service support and simplified administration panel.
The downside to WAMP is that it is only a desktop installed application, not playing nice with your portable web-serving needs. While not a real drawback, it can be useful to have a portable web server running on a stick for a web developer on the go. EasyPHP does work well on a portable drive, so long as you can live without PHP5 for a bit. For most things either web server package will work just fine. They both are small downloads, easy to install and run without a hitch, and make your life easier. Both packages are also free, which helps with sticker shock.
Remember the days when you had to change each file one by one on FTP and re-upload? Yeah, those days are over.
Panic, the fine folks that bring us Transmit, finally revealed the top secret app they've been developing over the past year with the release of the web development application Coda V1.0. This is not a WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop, do-all application. Coda has a specific target audience that consists of people who edit raw code using multiple tools such as a text editor, FTP client, CSS editor and Terminal.
Coda brings all these tools together in one neat interface. You can organize your files using Sites, edit with the text editor, utilize the built in preview functionality, style your pages with the CSS builder and even access Terminal with one click for those times you need to do a little MySQL or other Terminal task. You can make your changes locally then publish to the web, or edit the files directly on the server using the built in Transmit FTP engine. And as an added bonus, for those times you are stuck trying to remember syntax or learning something new, it also includes access to HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP reference books from within the interface.
After using Coda for a couple weeks it amazes me that this is just a version 1.0 release. Panic has released a 1.0.1 update, but it's hard for me to find anything to complain about. If you are a hand coder, you should definitely check out the 14 day free trial. Coda will retail for $99, but for a limited time it's available for $79. If you are a current owner of Transmit 3, knock another ten bucks off and it can be yours for $69. Sorry Windows users, Coda only runs on Mac OSX 10.4 and higher.
Like many web developers, I use MySQL constantly. Sure I can just use the command line, but it is faster to use some kind of graphical client with a decent UI. There are many out there, but my favorite for a while was MySQL's own MySQL Control Center (which has now been discontinued for a while). The replacement for Control Center is Administrator, and I am just not a big fan of it. I loved Control Center because it allowed query browsing and database management, and you'd be hard-pressed to find both features in Administrator which is why I don't like it as much. There are third-party alternatives as well, many of which are not free, which is a sticking point for me? Why, because I am cheap. I currently use (and love) SQLyog community edition (free and full-featured).
Oracle also has a SQL development client, called SQL Developer (oddly enough). They just upgraded it in fact. Now it does easy import and export data in many popular formats. Not retyping all that data, priceless. Oracle's client will manage MySQL, SQL, and Oracle databases, which is rare to find a free tool that handles all three.
I will stick to SQLyog for my database management needs however, since Oracle's java-based solution needs to be configured to work with MySQL's JDBC drivers apparently. Often I don't have the time to install third party drivers, and configure them, that is what a client should be responsible for. Ease of use, and dummy-proofing your app, even more priceless.
MySQL's VP of community relations Kaj Arno's he explains in his blog that MySQL has changed its license from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", so MySQL doesn't have tobe forced to use the GPLv3, which as you know is not so widely adopted yet. MySQL may very well move to the new v3 license once it becomes more commonplace, but for now, they don't want to put users and developers in a tight spot with a new license, so they are opting to use the older version exclusively for now. Seems like a good move to stay put but help with the future license progress as well.
ForumMatrix is a handy comparison matrix to check if you are thinking about running a public forum and aren't sure what forum software to use, or if you already do run a forum and want to switch to a different package. You can select different packages from their list and compare the details (license, features, cost, etc.) side-by-side in a easy to follow table.
If you aren't sure where to start ForumMatrix has a handy Choice Wizard that will ask you a few specific questions about what features you may be looking for. I can see this as especially helpful for people new to running a forum. It filters results down to flat versus threaded, license type/cost, storage type (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL, etc.), attachments, and more. If you still aren't sure and need advice from other users, you can also drop by their own forums and consult others on their own opinions.
phpMyAdmin is one of the best and most heavily used (at least on my desk) MySQL management tools. It makes everything you do in MySQL simple, and can be either desktop or web-based. Even LAMP installs have a portable, USB drive friendly version, which is one of my favorites. Sure, I love SQLyog, MySQL Administrator and other desktop based clients too, but none is as versatile and useful as phpMyAdmin. 2.9.0.2 is a setup script distribution that addresses issue in 2.9.0.1, so nothing majorly new here, but you can download it, so we are all over it. Security fixes and bug fixes are good things.
XAMPP is an easy to install web server distribution containing Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl. It claims to be a snap to use and install. After I got through clicking like 20 times to find the actual file download link on the XAMPP site (hosted at sourceforge), which irritated me a bit, the process got a bit better. You can download three different versions of the file, the installer (32MB), the zip file (86MB), or the self-extracting executable (28MB), all with MD5 checksums. The software package you get with this download includes these fine modules: Apache HTTPD 2.2.3, MySQL 5.0.24a, PHP 5.1.6 + 4.4.4 + PEAR + Switch, MiniPerl 5.8.7, Openssl 0.9.8c, phpMyAdmin 2.8.2.4, XAMPP Control Panel 2.3, Webalizer 2.01-10, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v4.01a, FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.18, SQLite 2.8.15, ADODB 4.91, Zend Optimizer 3.0.1, XAMPP Security. The full install on my Windows machine ate up about 218MB of hard disk space, which is quite good for all that software in one shot. I found myself as happy as a kid with a 6LB. box of chocolates and no one else around. Luckily, I didn't have to know anything about the guts of the programs running, and XAMPP even offered to install and run all the services I needed, which it also succeeded at starting, which is a rare thing for all of them to work on the first try. Many times these LAMP-like installs go awry in some way, but XAMPP looks to be in control in this regard. At first I thought, oh great, all I need is one more LAMP to install and put up with, but honestly, it was the easiest install and start-up I have ever done. Most enjoyable indeed. If your LAMP needs an upgrade, XAMPP is a new light bulb.
I've never actually heard of SQLyog before (even though it claims to be the "most popular MySQL GUI for the last 4 years"), but its web site is making a big deal out of the fact that this GUI front-end for MySQL is now open source, ergo free, and I certainly won't complain about there being more free MySQL front-ends in the world. To be fair, it's the "Community Edition" that's gone OSS--Enterprise will still cost you--but it does tout a solid feature set, including a favorites manager, a tabbed query/result set editor, SQL templates, export to CSV/XML/HTML, user management, and more. With the recent death of MySQL-Front, SQLyog is a very welcome addition to the open source family.
The AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford University wraps up today, but not before making a declaration of something many LAMP developers have known for a long time.
The "AlwaysOn 100" honors 100 private companies for their technical innovation, customer adoption and market potential. This year's 100 innovators are comprised of a majority of companies that share one common characteristic, they all use MySQL in mission critical portions of the enterprise.
"When Joe Kraus launched the Excite search service in the early days of "Web 1.0", he estimated it cost around $3m to get the business up-and-running. Today, after founding JotSpot, Kraus estimates a Web 2.0 company can start up with an investment of around $100,000 (£50,000)"
gotAPI is a cool Ajaxy web app that gives you quick
access to reference materials for a variety of web technologies. On the top there's a list of languages including HTML,
JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Java, Perl, and six others, and when you click on one of them the list of HTML tags, JavaScript
objects, PHP functions, etc. pops up. There's a search box at the top for finding items quickly, and clicking on an
item brings up a reference page at the W3C , MSDN, W3Schools, and the like. I wish there were more languages available
(Ruby, Python, and XUL, for example), but it's a great one-stop resource of a lot of tasks.
Since getting out of the database business a few years ago,
I haven't had to sully myself with things like foreign keys or even SQL for a while. But now that it looks like I'll be
building a site using MySQL and PHP, it's back to the db again. Luckily, developer Thomas Mango sent in a tip about his
PGnJ app. It's written in Java, and serves as a database manager for
PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. Even better, everything is in one unified interface, with tables, fields, and data all
in one place. This is also one of the only tools I know of for this job, in OS X, that'll do it for free. Thanks
Thomas!
According to CNet, MySQL's Marten Mickos has
confirmed that enterprise database vendor Oracle made a bid for the open source heavy-hitter, but was turned
down. This news comes on the heels of yesterdays' report that Oracle is acquiring Sleepycat
Software, makers of the open source Berkeley DB. No details of Oracle's offer have been disclosed, but Mickos says
MySQL turned down the juggernaut's offer because the company wishes to maintain its independence.
There was a toss up this week about whether it would be better to dig right in to the Linux HTML editors, or to wax poetic about setting up LAMP so that those choosing to go the content management system (CMS) route could test any changes they made with such editors on their local machines.
EasyPHP
phpMyAdmin
gotAPI
Since getting out of the database business a few years ago,
I haven't had to sully myself with things like foreign keys or even SQL for a while. But now that it looks like I'll be
building a site using MySQL and PHP, it's back to the db again. Luckily, developer Thomas Mango sent in a tip about his
