Alex Stetsenko

A new version of ACDSee Pro Photo Manager has been announced recently. The most interesting part that it is going to be supplemented by an online mode which allows to store and share 2Gb of photos on the ACDSee Online website.

Definitely it promised to be unbeatable solution for professional photographers. I am pretty sure that this new product of ACD Systems, Inc. will
make Google and Yahoo feel uncomfortable even while it is in beta stage.

P.S.: don’t miss the opportunity to sign up and get exclusive invite to the Beta!

If it is required to insert into table hundreds of thousand records (for any reason), just keep in mind that the query below works faster:

INSERT INTO `User` (ID, Name)
    VALUES (1, 'Jack'), (2, 'Jacob'), (3, 'John');

than one by one insert like this:

INSERT INTO `User` (ID, Name) VALUES (1, 'Jack');
INSERT INTO `User` (ID, Name) VALUES (2, 'Jacob');
INSERT INTO `User` (ID, Name) VALUES (3, 'John');

Usually MySQL GUI tools support export of table data as one by one insert. But still it is helpful ‘trick’ in case you need to generate tons of test data.

P.S.: looking forward to Made In Hong Kong.

From time to time I am asked to advise a good administration and development tool for MySQL.

Of course, there is an official MySQL GUI Tools Bundle for 5.0. But is it the best option to manage MySQL database? Unfortunately, I doubt it.

For instance, I have found three much more interesting tools: SQLyog, EMS MySQL Manager and Toad for MySQL.

SQLyog and EMS MySQL Manager are good tools unless you want to save your budget for something else. It shouldn’t be a big deal for business but for an independent developer could be quite important.

So the best option in my opinion is Toad for MySQL. Granted it has everything required for database development (basically as any other mentioned above tool) but it also has perfect user interface and ‘look and feel’. You will understand that especially if you had to switch to MySQL development after experience with either MS Query Analyzer or MS SQL Server Management Studio.

There is also EMS MySQL Manager Lite which is freeware too. But it has limits on database size as well as all concept of EMS user interface ‘logic’ is completely different which can be uncomfortable for many developers. But also keep in mind that EMS releases comprehensive MySQL products family.

For the moment I cannot advise any tool for Mac or Linux but phpMyAdmin will work for 100% 😉 .

Below is Toad for MySQL screenshot.

P.S.: I am still looking for anything worthy for MySQL routines development and version control. I.e. something similar or better than MS Visual Studio Database Projects. There was no sense of such tools before since MySQL did not support stored procedures, functions and views. But now it would be good to have tools for database code management.

One of the best comedy movies in 2008.
Unfortunately real comedy movie is infrequent thing now. So it is quite easy to be “one of the best”.
Anyway I enjoyed watching Yesman (except couple moments 😉 ).

Thanks to Whole Foods I have found farmer cheese recently. Russian caption is not the only difference with cottage cheese. For instance it is unsalted! 🙂

Like row maximum and minimum there is another interesting function GROUP_CONCAT which returns values inside group as separated string. For example:

SELECT UserType, GROUP_CONCAT(ID) FROM `User` GROUP BY UserType;

will return:
1 | 1,2,3,4,5
2 | 6,7,8,9,10

Also it is possible to set custom separator (comma by default), sort order and eliminate repeated values by using DISTINCT:

SELECT
  UserType,
  GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT County ORDER BY Country SEPARATOR '; ')
FROM `User`
GROUP BY UserType;

But draw attention that GROUP_CONCAT has length limit 1024 symbols. It is possible to change that limit by updating global variable group_concat_max_len.

Just reminder that MySQL statement for selecting more than one field into variables should look like below:

SELECT ID, `Name` INTO UserID, UserName FROM `User` WHERE ID = 100;

I.e. single INTO per SELECT statement instead of own INTO for each field.