Every now and then we all have to reread something we may already know because frankly if you are like me, you can’t keep everything in your head. I tend to go back over tips and tricks and even database concepts when I have time so I will maybe remember enough about it so when a problem arises I at least know where to go look and find the answer. It is with, that I want to write about my latest re-education attempt.

Every user expects a search engine on any Web site they visit. Unfortunately, search engines are extremely complex to develop. They require massive amounts of resources and time to implement. Today I’ll show you how to use a MySQL (or any SQL database) to create your own basic search engine.

Hi Eran: You mention “target customer permissions” in your article and I’m just trying to understand this concept. Here’s an example: I buy my target lists from companies and use them to conduct direct marketing. (Large AS/400 companies).

Now, gathering customer permissions – is this the ability to obtain information about a direst mail respondent and to now add them to my marketing contact ‘mix’? – Do I need permission to add them to the mix?

If you collect and use any kind of data you probably have some kind of organizing system. Whether you use index cards, a filing cabinet, Excel spreadsheets, or some kind of database program, your system should let you add and change data, delete data, and retrieve data, and it should work faster and more efficiently than if you had to do it by hand.

Transact-SQL, an extension to the SQL database programming language, is a powerful language offering many features–a wide variety of datatypes, temporary objects, system and extended stored procedures, scrollable cursors, conditional processing, transaction control, exception and error handling, and much more. We’ll introduce those features later in this chapter in the section “What is Transact-SQL?” Before getting to Transact-SQL specifics, however, we’ll provide some background information that will help you get a feel for the overall database environment in which Transact-SQL operates. After we explain the basic differences between ANSI SQL and Transact-SQL, we’ll jump back to more generalized topics. We’ll cover the genesis of the relational database model and its impact on SQL programming languages. We’ll talk a bit about normalizing data and introduce you to the idea of row-processing and set-processing information technology. We’ll spend a little time talking about the history of SQL Server in general. Finally, we’ll introduce many of the features of the Transact-SQL programming language itself.

Many programmers hit a brick wall in their SQL queries, slowing development to a crawl and causing an over abundance of hair loss and coffee consumption. If you have been staring at the screen with a blank look and a pounding heart, wondering what you did to deserve this mess, you have come to the right place. In this article I will unveil the six most common SQL query errors and give you tips on stress prevention.

Working in the software market, one has to be acutely aware of the technology adoption cycle and its implications on company’s strategy at any given stage. B2B software marketing has been Eran’s area of expertise for over ten years, most of them spent in senior management positions with companies in this space. He now runs the MarketCapture consulting practice, helping software companies combine this kind of strategic awareness with hands-on approach to tactical execution of marketing programs.

Though Oracle and IBM deny that MySQL, PostgreSQL or other open-source offerings are a threat to their enterprise business, they are still taking steps to re-emphasize their low-end offerings.

Microsoft Corp. has released a 64-bit database and claims that the new system features performance rivaling that of Unix-based systems yet offers greater ease of use and at a lower cost.

Oracle Corp. aficionados gathering next week at the IOUG Live! 2003 conference in Orlando, Fla., are expected to discuss the impending beta release-and perhaps even the beta code itself-of the company’s next big database upgrade.

Well, well, well… you jacked up your database, didn’t you?

Over the last couple of decades we’ve seen a growing gap between database-oriented software developers and in-memory application software developers.

Whether it is an Internet or Intranet, a web catalog or an e-commerce site with shopping cart, somewhere these applications are accessing a data source.

It’s been said that it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to keep an old one. Despite this, most businesses spend an enormous amount of time and effort chasing after new customers.

Our Address Book App (contd.)

Before We Start Coding

Interacting with a database is a routine job in the application world. Quite often you need to store information in the database, fetch it to generate some form of report and update or delete it as required. Java provides the JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) API for executing SQL statements. JDBC, being Java-based, leverages the benefits of the language and provides a convenient way to communicate with different databases, such as Oracle, Informix, Sybase, etc.

Introduction

The Sample Code… Explained

MySQL has become increasingly popular in the last year because of its ease of use and price. Setting up a MySQL Server on a Windows machine is so easy you may not even realize it is there. Installing MySQL on a Linux machine isn’t quite as easy, but anyone with any experience installing programs on Linux wouldn’t have a problem. So, now that you have your server installed, how do you manage a multi-user environment? This is where your privileges come in.

In the first part of this article, I did not present any installation procedures and I felt that I left you in the cold. Therefore, I will do it here. Please keep in mind that the program presented here in not very difficult and if you cannot connect to the database, it is probably because of your setup.