A preliminary schedule is now available for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 (in Santa Clara, California, USA). I have two talks and a tutorial, currently scheduled as follows:

• MySQL Cluster Tutorial, Mon 08:30 on 12 Apr 2010, together with Andrew Hutchings and Andrew Morgan
• MySQL Cluster: An Introduction, Tue 11:55 on 13 Apr 2010
• Connecting MySQL and Python, Tue 15:05 on 13 Apr 2010

Schedule might change a bit, so I suggest keeping an eye on the conference website.

And please remember: we might have changed colors a few times past 2 years, but we are still the nice and friendly people we were back in MySQL AB!

Yes, MySQL has transactions if you use InnoDB or NDB Cluster for example. Using these transactional storage engines, you'll have to commit (or roll back) your inserts, deletes or updates.

I've seen it a few times now with people being surprised that no data is going into the tables. It's not so a silly problem in the end. If you are used to the defaults in MySQL you don't have to commit anything since it is automatically done for you.

Take the Python Database Interfaces for MySQL. PEP-249 says that, by default, auto-commit should be turned off. You could turn it back on, but it's good practice to be explicit and commit in your code. Remember the Zen of Python!

Here is just a small example to show it. Uses MySQL Connector/Python, but it should also work with the other MySQL database interfaces:

import mysql.connector
cnx = mysql.connector.connect(db='test')
cur = cnx.cursor()
cur.execute("""CREATE TABLE innodb_t1 (
  id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL,
  c1 VARCHAR(128),
  PRIMARY KEY (id)
) ENGINE=InnoDB""")
ins = "INSERT INTO innodb_t1 (id,c1) VALUES (%s,%s)"
cur.execute(ins,
  (1,'MySQL Support Team _is_ already the best',))
cnx.commit()
cur.close()
cnx.close()

This post explains how to compile oursql and install it on MacOS 10.6. oursql is a Python database interface for MySQL, an alternative to MySQL for Python (i.e. MySQLdb) and MySQL Connector/Python.

First, find out which MySQL you installed. This can be either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version. To make sure, find the mysqld (e.g. in /usr/local/mysql/bin) and do the following in a Terminal window:

shell> file /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld
.../mysqld: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

If you see x86_64, you got 64-bit, otherwise 32-bit. If you see both, then you have a universal build. This is important for specifying the ARGSFLAG when building.

Download oursql from Launchpad and unpack it into some directory. Using the information from above, you'll have to do following for 64-bit platform (or universal build) in a Terminal window:

 shell> ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" python setup.py build
 shell> sudo python setup.py install

For 32-bit, you'll have to do:

 shell> ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" python setup.py build
 shell> sudo python setup.py install

Following error will be reported when you don't specify the correct ARCHFLAGS:

 ld: warning: in .../lib/libmysqlclient.dylib,
   file is not of required architecture

Tips:

• When building failed, it is good to remove oursql, unpack it and try again.
• If you don't want to compile anything, or run into more troubles, give MySQL Connector/Python a try (alpha releases). It's a pure Python implementation of the MySQL Client/Server protocol and doesn't need compiling or a MySQL installation.
• You can download MySQL from either www.mysql.com or dev.mysql.com.

Apparently, my talk at FOSDEM 2010 about Connecting MySQL and Python was the only one about Python? There should be more, or?

I have a hand-out ready in PDF. The slides are not usable without my chatter. It contains a few examples and links. Any comments, corrections, criticism.. are welcome!

The longer version of this talk will be given at the O'Reilly MySQL Conference&Expo 2010 in Santa Clara, California (USA).

Today we made a change in the schedule of talks held in the MySQL Developer Room at FOSDEM 2010, swapping two talks. Change is:

• 12:15 CET - Giuseppe's 'Sharding for the Masses
• 14:25 CET - Geert's Connecting MySQL and Python (title also changed)

The printed booklets found at the conference will not reflect the change, but the printable schedule has already been updated.

MySQL Connector/Python v0.1.3-devel is now available for download from Launchpad.org. Please note that this is a development (i.e. alpha, unstable, ..) release and we welcome everyone to test and report problems.

Highlights for this v0.1.3-devel:

• Important memory leak fixed when closing cursors.
• Warnings can now be raised as exceptions.
• Fixing unicode usage and broken error message when MySQL chops them
• Client flags can now be set correctly when connecting
• Conversion fixes for BIT/YEARSET and Python to DATE/DATETIME
• Adding MySQL Client Errors and raising better exceptions based on errno.

Enjoy!

Using SQLAlchemy unit test cases to further develop MySQL Connector/Python. It's probably debatable whether that's a good method or just lame. But it sure helps lots!

We've been pushing some code past days that makes Connector/Python almost pass all tests. Well, 4% is still failing, but I'm confident that in a few most problems will be dealt with. I had to make some changes to the SQLAlchemy v0.6 dialect as well, and some test cases had to be corrected. Hopefully those corrections will also go in the SQLAlchemy trunk later on.

shell> nosetests --dburi=mysql+mysqlconnector://root:@localhost/sqlalchemy
..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2092 tests in 314.656s

FAILED (errors=72, failures=11)

If you run the same tests against MySQLdb, you'll see (of course) less failures (9 to be exact).

FOSDEM 2010, Sunday 7 February, the MySQL Developer Room packed with 12 talks! And this year we serve Python just before the lunch break.

In 20 minutes I'll try to give an overview of the drivers currently available for connecting your Python applications with MySQL. Incase you wonder, this will not evolve around MySQL Connector/Python alone!

We'll also go over some frameworks and tools like SQLAlchemy.

20 minutes, it's not much, but should be enough. I hope to get a similar talk accepted for the MySQL Conference&Expo 2010.