attack of the web two point oh gremlins

[adularia]

Um. What?

When did it become completely impossible to just download a MySQL server package and install it?

Now they want me to fill out an "optional" registration form, which seems to be buggy because it keeps coming back with more "required" fields that I swear weren't there before, and do everything from provide my middle name to upload a photo

Comments

[caladri]

MySQL AB has been very much a company for quite some time. The download tomfoolery is annoying, but no worse than many other open source things require. At least it is very much not required. Direct links absolutely work. (And on systems with something like FreeBSD's ports systems or packages, it's just a command away! Presumably the Debian-derived Linux distros handle that well, too, but maybe they'll have yanked out some obviously buggy code, yielding a MySQL that can no longer store integers.

[adularia]

*giggle*

And yeah, someone eventually found/showed me the direct link to the downloads, and that's chugging away, but... argh.

[caladri]

I'm not a fan. In ways it annoys me more when closed-source software that's free is distributed that way. Like, I'm getting less of a bargain than for something that comes with source. I am always wishing for an open source alternative to StuffIt since now and then interesting fonts or other things that I want are in .sit :(

[craigp]

i would thing having to use mysql would be suffering enough.

[adularia]

Er... why?

I'm not a DBMS partisan, so I am genuinely curious.

[craigp]

(sorry, earlier response got messed up)

i just think if you care to bother putting your data into a rdbms, it should enforce constraints (check, foreign-key, etc) and not corrupt your data (silently truncate data, etc). atomicity is also good.

a cool resource is mit open-courseware. they have a course on web development. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-171Fall2003/CourseHome/index.htm

from their site:

"In choosing tools, please note that 6.171 requires the use of an ACID-compliant relational database management system. You'll learn the definition of "ACID" during the semester. But for now suffice it to say that MySQL is out; Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, and Oracle are in."

postresql is free and while it isn't perfect, it's leaps and bounds better than mysql. i've just honestly never understood why anyone would choose mysql, even for trivial projects.

[tallin]

... they ... want a photo?
We don't require that for the CLOSED SOURCE free database engine that is SQL Server Express.
... Whisky tango foxtrot?

[ewedistrict]

I apt-get'd the ubuntu mysql package without a problem just the other day. Took about five lines of Bash shell code to get MediaWiki running.