Curriculum 2006

January 21, 2006 Notes
PACS Database SIG did not meet in January 2006.

February 11, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead covered part one of "Getting Started with MySQL." It is based on his presentation to Mac Programming SIG on February 4, but he made some changes based on suggestions from MPSIG members who saw the first incarnation of his presentation, and he also made it less mac-centric for DB SIG's multi-platform audience. Here is his summary:

Getting started with MySQL

MySQL is reliable, fast, & reasonably easy to use. However version 4.0 didn't have some of the features needed for serious production work: stored procedures, triggers, views, point-in-time restore and (full-featured) transactions.

With MySQL 5.0, out late last year, MySQL has every feature reasonably needed in serious production.

I'm going to talk about:

what MySQL is

what you might want to choose it

how MySQL works, under the hood

how to setup MySQL

how to create a database

how to use a database

what the new features are & why they are important

how to do backups & restores with MySQL

There were many questions from members which were knowledgeably and agreebly answered by John.

March 18, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
There were many members present who missed February's presentation, so John Ashmead started by reviewing part one of "Getting Started with MySQL." There were so many questions and such good discussion that the meeting ended at same point (at the same slide) as it did in February. The topics covered included The First Database, What Is a Database, Different kinds of databases, Whyuse relational databases, How different databases including MySQL compare in general, how to install MySQL, the MySQL interface.

April 22, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead continued where he left off in February and March and continued with his presentation "Getting Started with MySQL." Topics covered include Tables, What is a Table, Creating Tables in MySQL, Fields and Null Values, and how these were handled by MySQL as compared with other databases. There were many questions and much discussion including matters of philosophy (platonic ideal of table, the meaning of null), and how many genders are needed in databases today.

May 20, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead continued where he left off in April in his presentation "Getting Started with MySQL." (null values) and discussed normalization, issues with creating tables, the life-cycle of data, transactions, etc. There was a fair amount of discussion of the atomicity (indivisibility) of a properly conducted transaction) happening completely or not at all (for example, when you are transferring money from checking into savings, you want both part of the transaction to happen reliably--money taken out of checking and put into savings).

June 10, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead continued with his "Getting Started in MySQL" presentation and discussed transactions, the properties that transactions should have (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability: ACID), locking, stored procedures in MySQL, and debugging.

July 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead continued where he left off in his presentation "Getting Started with MySQL" with a discussion of security issues in MySQL.

September 16, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead continued his presentation "Getting Started with MySQL" with a discussion of security issues in MySQL, going over some of the same ground as in July, since so many members did not attend the July meeting. There was no meeting in August.

October 21, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead concluded his presentation "Getting Started with MySQL" in the final installment of his talk, with a discussion of backups and restores, and concluding remarks.

November 18, 2006 Notes - cancelled

December 16, 2006 Notes - guest SIG leader Frank Stepanski
Frank Stepanski gave the first part of a three-part presentation on "Real-World PHP Development," in which he showed us a website he is creating using PHP and MySQL to edit, update, delete and search a MySQL table. He also used some OOP for centralizing his global functions and tables.

--Linda M. Kalb