LAMPsig - Meetings

LAMP developers guide to subversion Rescheduled

nospam@example.com (David Rolston) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:30:00 -0400

*MEETING RESCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 20 !!!*

This talk will cover the following topics:

1. Subversion basics: what it is, what it can be used for, the svn philosophy, and an interpretation of the underlying mechanics of SVN.
2. Basic subversion concepts including creation, security, Sandbox, updating, commiting, branching, tagging and merging
3. Common svn issues and how to deal with them.
4. Examples of typical svn use, using the svn command line client and the subclipse plugin integrated into the Eclipse editor will be attempted *live*.
5. Properties and the use of the invaluable Svnmerge.py script in faciltating branching and branch merging will be covered.

David Rolston has a long history of web development that dates back to the earliest days of the WWW. He is currently working for a startup company in the multiplayer social network gaming space. He was also one of the founding Lampsig members, and has previously given lampsig talks on PHP, SVG with Ajax, and Xen.

An Introduction to Maatkit

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:00:00 -0400

By Solomon Chang

Maatkit (available at http://www.maatkit.org) makes MySQL easier and safer to manage. It provides simple, predictable ways to do things you cannot otherwise do. It would be nice if these features were included with MySQL, but they are not. That's why Maatkit is now shipping by default with many GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian and CentOS.

You can use Maatkit to prove replication is working correctly, fix corrupted data, automate repetitive tasks, speed up your servers, and much, much more.

And best of all, Maatkit is Free Software so you can modify, inspect, and redistribute it yourself.

Multi-Instanced MySQL

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:00:00 -0400

By Solomon Chang

There are whispered rumors from the remote corners of MySQL configuration gurus concerning the Dark Art of running more than one instance on MySQL on the same machine. Like a body possessed by a legion host of demons (well, MySQL daemons, actually), a single machine could serve multiple instances of MySQL that each may respond to different names, ports, and... dare I say it...? IP addresses! Oh, the horror! The terror! The memory consumption!
However, just as summoning and binding nether-worldly entities into an unwilling mortal shell has its own nefarious uses, so too does the black magic of invoking two or more instances of mysqld on the same single machine. Slowly and surely, it is a gateway for you to embark upon other unspeakable database experiments, such as Replication and Distributed Clustering, whilst obviating the need for any other machine. Replication with but a single computer, you say? Yea, it is an abomination! But this abomination you can configure for yourself while dangling your sanity between hard drive capacity and memory usage!
Muhahahahaha!
Ph'nglul mglw'nath MySQL Instance Manager R'yleh!
MySQL Fhtagn!

Black robes and candles optional.

When he is not obsessing over the stories of HP Lovecraft, Solomon Chang is a MySQL certified DBA and the current acting director of LAMPSIG. He works as a professional Database Administrator in El Segundo, and is a co-author of the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide.

Managing MySQL Permissions

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:00:00 -0400

By Solomon Chang

There comes a time in the life cycle of a company where everyone has to stop connecting as password-less root to their central database. All the inherent security protocols (such as "We only have 3 users," or "No one here is malicious enough or knowledgeable enough to crack our Production database!") begin to lose relevance as the DB user base starts to grow. This talk aims at the "why" and the "how" of setting user permissions, as well as how users are generally authenticated into the system. This talk also delves into the granularity of permissions for those who require extremely fine-tuned access to database resources.

Solomon Chang is a MySQL certified DBA and the current acting director of LAMPSIG. He works as a professional Database Administrator in Venice Beach, and is a co-author of the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide.

An introduction to Flex - Chris Charlton

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:00:00 -0400

Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross platform, rich Internet applications based on the proprietary Adobe Flash platform. The initial release in March 2004 by Macromedia included a software development kit, an IDE, and a J2EE integration application known as Flex Data Services.

Flex is a hot (open source) topic this year and Linux users aren't left out. With the newly announced Adobe AIR for Linux and the upcoming Flex Builder 3 for Linux desktops, everyone can develop cross-browser/platform applications for the Web (SWF) or any popular desktop operating system (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows). Chris Charlton will be covering how to develop in Flex and deploy an RIA with one code-base while not having to worry about platform or browser differences.

So what is Flex and doesn't it cost money? The Flex SDK is free - containing a debugger, compiler, and the entire Flex framework. Adobe's IDE (Flex Builder) costs $250 (Standard Edition) and is free for students and teachers.

What's the difference between Flash and Flex? Why not just use Ajax? Good questions, but you'll want to attend the next LAMPSIG meeting to ask and find out!

---

Chris Charlton has tons of community involvement: authorized Adobe Flex Champion, Adobe User Group Manager for LA AIR, helps run LA Drupal, is co-author of the book Advanced Flex Application Development: Building RichMediaX, and teaches at the Rich Media Institute.

A Tour of External Language Stored Procedures for MySQL - Antony Curtis

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:00:00 -0400

The integration of Business intelligence and logic within the database has been a long requested feature for MySQL. With version 5.0, MySQL delivered a stored procedure implementation and here we extend it to provide general support for external language stored procedures.

We detail the philosophy and design of the external language stored procedure framework and its implementation within the server and libraries. We then also detail how an external language plug-in is written using the simple skeleton plug-in which exercises the basic interfaces between the server and external stored procedures.

Demonstrations using the already developed plug-ins, including an overview of the implementation for the simple XML-RPC and the more sophisticated Java plug-ins, writing stored procedures and functions, with ideas for applications and their utility.

This presentation includes a tour of the actual source code, highlighting the big picture. The audience will see the low impact of the main-line server code, the simplicity of writing plug-ins for new languages and the ease of using the language plug-ins already developed. This is an exciting new feature preview for MySQL. All demonstrations are with live running examples which everyone can try for themselves: No mockups, no screen-shots.

Hard Drive Based NDB MySQL Cluster

nospam@example.com (Solomon K. Chang) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:00:00 -0400

By Solomon Chang

NDB (Network Database) is an enterprise-grade, scalable, and highly available clustering storage engine - a share-nothing cluster that has no single point of failure - which is capable of running on inexpensive commodity hardware. NDB allows the construction of cheap, scalable, and exceptionally reliable database clusters, without expensive, specialized or additional hardware or software.

Back in June, Solomon Chang discussed the basic setup of a distributed, fault-tolerant, NDB Cluster for MySQL. The NDB storage engine has had one shortcoming, however: it has been traditionally memory-based.

As of MySQL 5.1, MySQL AB introduced a disk-based NDB solution, although its setup and configuration are significantly more complex than building a simple cluster. A disk-based cluster allows the administrator to spend less money on hardware costs by allowing him to commit larger NDB fragments to a single server. There will be a brief recap on the first Clustering lecture for those who are new to MySQL Distributed Clustering.

This clustering method can be implemented on as few as three computers that have been manufactured within the last decade. Come and hear how to do this and add this skill to your resume.

Solomon Chang is a MySQL certified DBA and the current actingdirector of LAMPSIG. He
works as a professional Database Administrator in Venice Beach, and is aco-author of
the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide.

MySQL Clustering with the NDB storage engine

nospam@example.com (Peter Benjamin) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:00:00 -0400

Main Topic: MySQL Clustering with the NDB storage engine
Speaker: Solomon Chang

NDB is an enterprise-grade, scalable, and highly available clustering storage engine - a share-nothing cluster that has no single point of failure - which is capable of running on inexpensive commodity hardware. NDB allows the construction of cheap, scalable, and exceptionally reliable database clusters, without expensive, specialized or additional hardware or software.

A MySQL Cluster distributes processing over multiple servers, resulting in a single redundant and scalable solution. A cluster consists of a set of computers running MySQL servers to receive and respond to queries, storage nodes to store the data held in the cluster and to process the queries, and one or more management nodes to act as a central point to manage the entire cluster. There are many reasons for clustering a database and several different methods of clustering.

Solomon will discuss the creation, methodology, and usage of a MySQL Cluster, and demonstrate a cluster in practice with a series of virtual machines.

Solomon Chang is a MySQL certified DBA and the current acting director of LAMPSIG. He works as a professional Database Administrator in Venice Beach, and is a co-author of the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide.

May Meeting: Free Linux virtual servers with Xen 3.0

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 19 May 2007 21:16:00 -0400

Main Topic: Free Linux virtual servers with Xen 3.0: a great developer tool
Speaker: David Rolston

David will explain what Xen is, and walk us through the setup on an existing Linux server. He will cover the basics of running multiple instances, and explain how a developer can easily set up multiple virtual Linux servers with completely separate LAMP environments, or conversely, how to clone an existing server with a complete LAMP environment.

David Rolston learned PHP and MySQL during a stint as head moderator of the PHP community site PHPFreaks.com and MySQLFreaks.com, he went on to author tutorials on LAMP and PHP OOP which have been read by over 100,000 people. David has participated in several Open Source projects, including The Serendipity Blog, as the author of the GeSHi plugin, and is the project leader of the Mambo & Joomla gallery plugin PonyGallery. These days he works as a consultant focused on open source technologies used in the creation of interactive web sites and web services.

April Meeting: AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript And XML: Zip Code fills in City, State fields

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:05:00 -0400

Main Topic: AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript And XML: Zip Code fills in City, State fields
Speaker: Peter Benjamin

There is movement afoot towards thick client applications using AJAX. Combining JavaScript in your web page to go back to the web server and run server side CGI scripts to send back small chunks of information to display on the page is the "thickening" of the thin web client.

Simple database applications are increasing the user friendliness of web forms with prefilling fields based on a just entered value, for example, in the United States entering the 5 digit zip code also defines the City and State values. Why have the customer type those values in as well, when AJAX can do it for them?

AJAX methodology using the XMLhttpRequest method or ActiveX equivalent will be overviewed using the Zip Code as an example. The lesson will be based on JavaScript and PHP and MySQL code.

Peter Benjamin is a freelance computer consultant with three decades of experience; he's programmed mainframes and minis, and more flavors of Unix than you can shake a stick at. Peter also leads a Web technology study group called Web Spinners; see http://LAWebSpinners.org

March Meeting: Examining the SourceForge LAMP Stack

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 21:05:00 -0400

Main Topic: Examining the SourceForge.net LAMP Stack by Ross Turk

Ross will speak about SourceForge's heterogeneous LAMP-based, open source infrastructure, providing in-depth descriptions of several core components, their interactions, and scalability models. He will analyze strengths and weaknesses of the site.

SourceForge.net, the world's largest open source destination, consistently ranks among the busiest 100 web sites. The services provided are various and, in some cases, very complex. Ross will present key site traffic and demographical metrics, and will discuss their constantly changing business requirements.

Ross Turk has served in multiple capacities since joining the Open Source Technology Group family in 2000. Most recently, as the Engineering Manager for SourceForge.net, he has led efforts to improve the site's usability, including the new Software Map and Search along with major navigation and aesthetic overhauls. In his current role, Ross is responsible for communicating with the SourceForge.net community and responding to its needs.

During his twelve-year career, Ross has focused on assessing and optimizing the business and engineering processes of a wide variety of engineering organizations, always with a passion for Open Source methodologies.

Ross recently spoke on this same subject at Linux World. Slides and podcast are available here.

February Meeting: An Introduction to Drupal

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 14:13:00 -0500

Main Topic: Introduction to Drupal by Richard Schave

Richard's quest for social context engines, knowledge management, semantically interchangeable metadata and a user-based paradigm as tracked through the development of the last three releases of Drupal.

Content Management Systems are becoming more and more versatile in quickly building complete Websites with a minimum of coding. Drupal is one of the most popular and best established.

Those who saw our Joomla presentation should check out this comparison of Drupal vs Joomla feature sets.

Richard holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from calstatela (class of '05), and is deeply concerned with building communities that matter as a function of the improved dissemination of information between niche groups. He regularly attends the sisters of jazz sunday night jam at the world stage, and has recently built his first bio filter for his japanese goldfish pond. (They're just being Koi.)

January Meeting: DNS for the LAMP Developer & SCALE 5 Preview

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:13:00 -0500

Main Topic: DNS for the LAMP Developer by Peter Benjamin
**** Meeting Date Change****: Saturday, Jan 20th, 1-3pm

Most talks on DNS are for bind/named services for corporate LANs, which excludes what the everyday LAMP developer needs to know to create multiple web sites with separate domain names on their office computer. Also, to be included is how the Registrar and Global Registry systems work to create new domain names, transfer names, expire names. In addition, Registrar web interface to multiple accounts to handle domain names will be expounded.

Peter Benjamin is a freelance computer consultant with three decades of experience; he's programmed mainframes and minis, and more flavors of Unix than you can shake a stick at. Peter also leads a Web technology study group called Web Spinners; see http://LAWebSpinners.org

After the DNS presentation we will go over announced SCALE sessions as they relate to LAMP programmers.

LAMPsig Holiday Party!!

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 20:15:00 -0500

Special Event: LAMPsig Holiday Party!!
Special Day: Saturday Dec 9th
Special Place: Philippe's French Dip

Join us for lunch and camaraderie at Philippe's French Dip at noon on Saturday December 9th.

We will try to get a room upstairs so that we don't disturb other diners with our well-known ribaldry. Make merry with fellow coders.

For those unfamiliar with Philippes, this is the birthplace of the French dip sandwich. They are also popular for their '40s-style menu and servers. Sides include coleslaw, potato salad, beef stew, and chili. Desserts range from pies to tapioca pudding to baked apples.

You can have a great meal for $10 or less!

Philippe The Original
1001 N. Alameda St.
Los Angeles CA. 90012

located 1 block north of Union Station, Olvera St, and the Hollywood 101 Freeway at Alameda and Ord St.
(213) 628-3781

No Regular Meetings for November & December

nospam@example.com (Jim Workman) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:39:00 -0500

Due to holidays near the fourth Wednesday of the next two months, LAMPSIG will not have our normal meetings during November and December.

We are not hibernating though. We will be working on our project for SCALE 4 in February of next year. We will soon be asking for volunteers to help with the project. Stay tuned for more information.