I've recently upgraded my servers to MySQL 5.0.15.  I like the new features, and it's stable enough to run on a production server.  I have run into a few snags along the way.

First off, a lot of the code I'm running websites on has been some poorly written SQL JOIN statements.  I've had to rework those and report them myself.  I still have a few more to do though, but that's for a project I haven't gotten fully off the ground yet, thankfully.

Second, I found a problem in my own code.  Part of the problem was that the function I was using for password hashing didn't say not to use it when I wrote the code.  It does in the documentation now.  It used to return a 16 character result.  It works differently now.  I've since switched everything over to using MySQL's MD5 function instead and it works great.  I just had to reset all the passwords for a website I run.  That sucked.

I'm sitting here waiting on MySQL 4.1 to recompile. It doesn't want to. I've resorted to modifying the ports Makefile to use the --with-isam option and recompile it that way. We'll see if that works.

When I tried before from the work directory of the port, it kept failing at one spot that didn't seem to have anything to do directly with the ISAM option. Something about gen_lex_hash not being found, even though it was there, ready to be compiled. I just don't feel like doing that kind of troubleshooting right now.

It looks like it may be working, but it's still compiling at this point.

Update: Half an hour later, we have a working MySQL.

I upgraded MySQL on Uranus this weekend from 4.0.x to 4.1.13.  What I didn't know until I got phone calls about a website not working is that MySQL 4.1 no longer supports the ISAM tables by default.  Some of my databases for the websites have been around since 3.x and are still using that table type that is being phased out.  So now I have to recompile MySQL 4.1 so that I can convert the tables over to the newer format so I can get one with my day.  *grumbles*

I found an introduction to MaxDB on mysqlfreaks.com.  After looking at it, MaxDB may not be as useful to me as I though, except that it supports stored procedures.  Still worth looking into though.  That website might be helpful in the future as well.

So as not to be completly wasting my time, I've been doing some research online this evening.  I came across MaxDB from MySQL.  It's an enterprise class database server.  It is also open source (as in free).  It looks like it might be a viable alternative for our in-house database needs at work.  I'm especially interested in the fact that it has ODBC support without a third party add-on.

Part of my problem using MySQL is that it requires a third party module for me to use it from .NET code.  The add-on I'm using now is free, but no longer supported.  The one I would like to use is to expensive for me to purchase for work due to budget contraints.  So this is definately something I'm going to look into more.  The only problem I'm seeing is that it runs on Linux and Windows, but not FreeBSD, which is my server OS of choice.  That's a solvable problem though.

So I'm having a bit of trouble with one of my databases for Outdoor America Store. The trouble is, I've gone brain dead today and can't remember how all of it is set up, and I'm notoriously bad for not keeping notes on past projects. I am, however, working to correct that shortcoming. Maybe I can get it all sorted out and figure out what my problem is. We'll see. But for now, I just want to scream or kill someone.

I haven't been getting enough sleep for the last week or so. I wonder how much that is to blame for my focus problems I've been having.