With Oracle stored procedures the database developer can display output to the SQL client. This is very handy when you want to use a stored procedure to compute certain logic and display the output directly to the user.

In MySQL you can optimize a query running against a table by choosing the correct index. Furthermore MySQL allows you to index strings as well (text, varchar, binary, etc..) in an efficient way by using part of the field length, known as prefix.

Troubleshooting and detecting memory related problems in Linux normally boils down to analysing and eventually determine what is going on within the virtual memory. Linux comes with a handy tool called vmstat which helps us examine the virtual memory.

Using heartbeats in database tables is a very widely used concept for an application to determine whether two or more database nodes are in sync. Part 1 of this series of articles describes the basic scenario of using a heartbeat table in a simple master slave replication.

Most people use SSH and console to access linux machines - physical or virtual boxes! Thus for you guys who use virtualbox might find it really cumbersome to have to fire off a GUI to access the machine, even if you decide to minimise the window and SSH directly from the client. Luckily there is a solution to run a VirtualBox machine in the background.

If you haven't heard already, Google is about to start keeping track of every single web search you perform and associate it to your name. (It already does this, but the results are anonymised months later; with these changes, your name and searching habits will be etched in stone.) Please take the time to protect your online privacy before March 1st.