Excited with the release of the MySQL Connector/C++, I thought I’d get it going on Mac OS X.

You’ll first hit the problem that Mac OS X doesn’t come with CMake. So you’ll have to download it from the site - there’s a warning there that the .dmg installer only works for Tiger, but I ran it on Leopard, and its just fine. Don’t forget to allow it to create links in /usr/bin for ease of use.

After that, you will need to install glib. But to get glib going, you need some dependencies:

• gettext
• pkgconfig
• and then glib

Installing them is simple: untar (tar -zxvpf package.tar.gz), ./configure, make, then a sudo make install.

Now, the README file or the instructions on the wiki will just work. I have several MySQL installations, so I preferred to specify what cmake found. I did this by:
cmake -D MYSQL_DIR:PATH=/usr/local/mysql/ -D GLIB_DIR:PATH=/usr/local/lib/glib-2.0/ .

Then a simple make, and you can go on and try the examples, in examples/. Try the connect application to make sure things are working. You will probably run into a snag though:


luna:examples ccharles$ ./connect
Connector/C++ connect basic usage example..

ERR: MySQL_DbcException in /Users/ccharles/code/mysql_connector_cpp_1_0_0_preview/examples/connect.cpp((function n/a)) on line 159
ERR: Cannot connect (MySQL error code: 0 )

Take a look at examples/examples.h, and look at the connection properties. It uses the test database, on localhost (127.0.0.1), standard port 3306, user is root, and the default password set there is root too. This may not be the commonest setting, so don’t hesitate to change the password or leave it blank (ala a default install), and rerun make. The sample applications will now work :)

Congratulations to Andrey, Ulf, and the rest of the connectors team in getting this going!

Yes, I know. JavaOne is about Duke, the friendly mascot of Java technology. Created and maintained by James Gosling and all.

But MySQL also introduces Sakila to the JavaOne attendees. Sakila is also friendly, and the mascot of MySQL technology. The dolphin was chosen by MySQL founders Michael “Monty” Widenius and David Axmark, as was its name Sakila (which came from a naming contest in the early days).

Together with Giuseppe (in the picture above) and the rest of the MySQL Community Team, I will be handing out incarnations of Sakila (also seen above in the pic) at CommunityOne and JavaOne as follows:

• Monday 5 May 2008 09:30-10:45: CommunityOne General Session: Ian Murdock, Sun Microsystems; Panel: Matt Asay, Alfresco CNET, Mårten Mickos, MySQL, Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation, Ted Leung, Python, Stormy Peters, OpenLogic; Rich Green, Sun Microsystems
• Monday 5 May 2008 12:25-13:20, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297794 Creative Programming with the MySQL Management System, Giuseppe Maxia, MySQL
• Monday 5 May 2008 13:30-14:25, Moscone South - Esplanade 307:
  S297257 Scaling MySQL, Scott Feldstein, Hyperic
• Monday 5 May 2008 16:00-16:55, Moscone South - Esplanade 307: S297136 Streamlined Web Applications with MySQL Cluster and mod_ndb, John David Duncan, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 15:20-16:20: TS-7813 The MySQL JDBC API Driver, And Making It Do What You Want, Mark Matthews, Darren Oldag, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 16:40-17:40: TS-7814 MySQL Cluster and Java Technology (and Python, and Ruby, And…), Monty Taylor, MySQL
• Tuesday 6 May 2008 19:30-20:20: BOF-5039 JDBC 4.1 Specification Overview, Lance Andersen, Sun Microsystems, Inc.; Mark Matthews, MySQL

Ah, and rumour has it that Jonathan may pop in during Giuseppe’s presentation!

Come, ask a smart question, interact, and get a Sakila!

Today MySQL releases the first beta version of MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.1. This means that Connector/ODBC 5.1 is now feature complete. Go download it!

Connector/ODBC 5.1 is suitable for most MySQL versions in active use today. It works with MySQL 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 6.0. If anyone is still on 4.0 or earlier releases, you should have upgraded ages ago; consider Connector/ODBC 5.1 “the final straw”.

As I wrote in September when we released the alpha version,

It is a partial rewrite of the the original MyODBC 3.51 code base, originally developed by Monty and Venu Anuganti, including individual parts of the current 65K ODBC 5 code base.

The new ODBC 5.1 driver, like 3.51, supports all relevant platforms (including Win64). While ODBC mostly is relevant for Windows, we have some (but not many) Linux based ODBC users.

Overall, ODBC 3.51 (released as 3.51.20) is now in a better state than ever. The ODBC QA team has written several hundred new tests. Without doubt, the 3.51 code base is now a good fundament for the new ODBC 5.1 version.

We’ve added a MSI installer for Windows 64-bit and implemented a native Windows setup library. We’ve implemented most parts of the section in my September blog titled “Before ODBC 5.1 goes beta, you can expect the following functions”, except sqlbigint and the native Mac OS X setup library. There is no binary package for Mac OS X on 64-bit PowerPC because Apple does not currently provide a 64-bit PowerPC version of iODBC. Also, the HP-UX 11.23 IA64 binary package does not include the GUI bits because of problems building Qt on that platform.

For more details on functionality added and bugs fixed, look for Jim Winstead’s announcement later today.

Our usual warning: Keep in mind that this is a beta release, and as with any other pre-production release, caution should be taken when installing on production level systems or systems with critical data.

Thank you to all who’ve tested Connector/ODBC 5.1 so far! And, obviously, we welcome more testing.

References:

• Connector/ODBC 5.1 Download: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/5.1.html
• My September 2007 blog Re-engineered ODBC 5.1 driver for MySQL: http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2007/09/11/re-engineered-odbc-51-driver-for-mysql/
• MySQL Connector/ODBC documentation http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/myodbc-connector.html (it’s being extended from ODBC 3.51 only to cover also ODBC 5.1)