December 29th, 2006 - by Sheeri Kritzer

Welcome to the 25th edition of Log Buffer, the DBA community’s Carnival of the Vanities-style blog of blogs about the database world.

This is the last Log Buffer of calendar year 2006. The database world seems to be a series of series lately, so let's jump right in:

If, like me, you have no idea what doors and signals are in Solaris 10, you might want to read part 4 of Frank Mash's "Managing MySQL on Solaris 10", entitled Solaris Doors and Signals.

On a more theoretical level, Random Notes describes lack of easy and complete access in the 3rd part of the series, "What stops a BI implementation from being a success?"

There's always lots of spam in my inbox about enhancement of one thing or another. Chris Eaton uses enhanced views in An Expert's Guide to DB2 Technology's series on using SQL to monitor DB2 9 with SQL scripts and enhanced views:

• Viewing Notification Logs
• Viewing Database History and
• Viewing Long-Running Queries

The similarly-named An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology has a series on Oracle Streams. This week part 2 describes how to Send CDC [Change Data Capture] Data to 9i Jonathan Lewis' Oracle Scratchpad scratches out a second part to his Analysing Statspack.

Fulltext search is a pretty hot topic no matter what database you're using, and zillablog has PostgreSQL full text search testing PART II. MySQL users beware -- Kevin Burton's Feed Blog reveals a MySQL Bug with FLUSH TABLES and Fulltext Indexes in >=4.1.

If you're the type that likes to type their own data by typing in new types, Radio Free Tooting toots their series on Programming with Oracle SQL TYPE constructs with Part 2.

The new year is almost upon us, and 2007 is when the US and Canada are affected by Daylight Savings Time pattern changes. Oracle's Director of Applications Technology Integration Steven Chan has Documentation Available for Daily Saving Time 2007 Changes for Apps 11i.

And speaking of corny transitions between paragraphs, Oracle "springs ahead" with a USD $54 million grant to Indian polytechnical schools. CRM Chump has the scoop at Oracle Academy Gearing Up for Spring Semester in India.

In case you prefer Halloween over Christmas, Arjen Lentz gives users a "trick" instead of a "treat" in his Christmas Challenge: getting information out of INSERT/UPDATE in MySQL -- the post contains how to get information out of a MySQL UPDATE, and the comments have Data Charmer Guiseppe Maxia INSERT answer.

Brian Duff of Duffblog has a link to a Flash Virtual Tour of Oracle's "Unbreakable" Datacenter.

In the "How-to" department, Alexander Gladchenko writes about how to RESTORE onto RAW partition in SQL Server. Oracle is not Magic, it just takes years of experience writes about How to apply patch when adpatch is currently running? Oracle Online Help shows how to find the Execution plan of a running SQL statement. Step-by-step How to stop a DB2 Instance will remove even the most stubborn DB2 processes.

Insights of DB2 & Application Development takes a stance In Defence of Microsoft stating that while "DB2 is the first data server to offer programmers a choice of using Windows Vista", Microsoft has made a patch available so that SQL Server may be run on Vista. How often do geeks defend Microsoft, anyway?

Reading between the lines of Tom Moertel's Never Store Passwords in a Database! it's implicitly stated that companies should assume that customers use the same password regardless of security -- Reddit should have assumed that people use the same password for Reddit as their e-mail and bank accounts, and secure their passwords accordingly. Explicitly, the comments state that "Never" means "As a general rule" and "Passwords" means "cleartext passwords".

Firebird news reminds us that the 8th International Free Software Forum (fisl8.0, for "Free and Open Software") call for papers is still open until January 7th.

Kevin Closson's Oracle Blog debunks the latest benchmarking record set by Oracle on SAP, and also talks about the high availability of RAC. It's always interesting to see the facts behind the facts, and how the scientific method can go astray when the background is revealed.

Log Buffer ends 2006 with some food for thought. Sean McCown's Database Underground asks and answers, "Where Does Database Auditing Belong?"