I’ve just recently come across a piece of software called Jet Profiler for MySQL. This is a program that runs on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows (it’s runs on Java), and comes in both a free and commercial version. Jet Profiler for MySQL is a diagnostic tool, used to analyze and report upon your database’s performance, specifically in terms of the queries run, the tables used, and the MySQL users. It also has more advanced capabilities, like reporting upon master/slave relationships, locking, threads, and so forth. One particularly interesting feature is that it doesn’t require any special server configuration; in fact, it doesn’t even need to be installed on the server. You can install the application on your desktop computer, create a new MySQL user on the server, and the software will connect through it. Software like this is another good way to better understand your database and your Web application.
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I came across the Ubiquity plug-in for Firefox the other day. If you use your browser a lot, and really like cool, cryptic ways of saving you steps, I could see this being revolutionary (on a personal level). I came across this after reading some stuff about my favorite utility, QuickSilver; the premise and usage of Ubiquity is comparable. Ubiquity allows you to tie other services into the current Web browser. For example, in this video, by one of Ubiquity’s creators at Mozilla, they show how to use Ubiquity to add a Google map to an email, then add a note to their calendar, without ever leaving the current browser window. Later in that same demonstration, part of a Web site is translated from Japanese to English, again, without leaving the current browser window. For more information, also see the other videos by Aza Raskin, http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/, and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9527.
To be clear, Ubiquity is still in a beta format, and it’s pretty geeky stuff. But if you’re the kind of person that likes cutting edge (but still useful) ideas, and/or, if you have some time to kill, check it out.
I haven’t formally written about MySQL Workbench in any of my books (I don’t think), but wanted to give it a quick mention here. MySQL Workbench is a visual database design application (an entity-relation/modeling tool) for creating and managing database schemas. It runs on many operating systems and is being released in both free and commercial versions.
If you haven’t used a visual database design tool before, you’ll need to spend some time reading up on it. The application can be used to design and then create new databases or create documentation for existing ones. This kind of software is especially useful if you:
- prefer visual design tools
- may need to create databases on one server, then recreate them on another
- want to package along an excellent resource when turning a site over to a client
MySQL Workbench is currently in an alpha release. That means not all of its features are quite there yet and the documentation will need to be much improved (some of the links on MySQL’s pages seem to be inconsistent). But if you have some spare time, you may want to play with this now. If you don’t have the time, or prefer more developed software, keep the MySQL Workbench in mind for later in the year.
On MySQL’s Web site, you can find links to download the software for Windows and Linux. An alpha version for Mac OS X was released just before Christmas. I didn’t find any obvious links to it on the MySQL Web site, but did find them at this post.
[intlink id=”128″ type=”post”]In a previous post[/intlink], I talked about using Yahoo!’s YSlow Firefox plug-in to analyze and improve your Web site’s speed. In that post I mentioned that my site—www.larryullman.com—fared pretty well (an 86 out of 100) but there were a couple of things that I hadn’t even heard of before. Well, I started making some tweaks, and here’s the result so far, including discussion of CDNs, which were new to me. Continue Reading…
A while back I stumbled upon (using the sweet Firefox plug-in, StumbleUpon), this discussion of the 20 things you should do, or the applications you should install, after performing a fresh install of Ubuntu Linux. Now, I’m primarily a Mac person, but if I need to use Linux for basic or desktop needs, Ubuntu is by far the distribution of choice (for a Linux server, I’m currently using CentOS). I like Ubuntu because:
- You can test it by running it from a CD on your computer, without doing an actual install.
- If you do want to install it, that’s quite easy.
- It just plain works.
I’m not trying to start a debate as to which version of Linux is best, or as to whether you should use Linux at all, I’m just saying that I think Ubuntu Linux is sweet. (Although I’ll add as an aside, that I occasionally see messages from people new to Linux claiming that it’s the greatest thing ever and they wonder why everyone doesn’t use Linux; I do wonder if such people are still using Linux so religiously six months later.)
Anyway, some of the things mentioned in the article are eye candy (which doesn’t make them irrelevant) and others are quite useful, like installing the core Microsoft fonts (Times New Roman et al.). Another product, Wine, will let you run some Windows applications in Ubuntu, if you have that need. Then there’s a few links to multimedia utilities, from browser plug-ins to video and audio players.
A nice article, a good site, worth a read if you’re using Ubuntu or even thinking about it.
