or Google the Open Source Company presents their new technology!

The Google I/O conference in San Francisco is the first of his kind, during two days the conference provides the attendee 90 sessions grouped by the following categories:

• Ajax and JavaScript
• APIs and Tools
• Maps and Geo
• Mobile
• Social

Furthermore they held sessions like Code labs, Tech Talks and the Fireside Chat. So maybe you’re looking for the “Search” category? Yes there are a few lessons about search optimization and the Ajax Search API, but most sessions are about new modern technologies like Gears and the Google App Engine.

Those people who knows Google as the search engine provider and advertising company would be very surprised about the strong open source character of this conference. (more…)

This is part two of the article “Database management with phpMyAdmin” a review of the book “Mastering phpMyAdmin” and the open source software phpMyAdmin.

The PMA relational system

In MySQL there is no native function to create relations between several database tables. Using the InnoDB database type makes it possible to link with foreign keys and in the latest versions there are stored procedures available to create or handle relations (and other intelligence) inside the database. PMA has great features to create relations while working on data within the system, Yes the limit is for transactions within PMA, if you need relations within your own application you need to create them by yourself, all relational data created by PMA is stored as PMA meta data. The relational system is not enabled by default, setup scripts (table creation statements) are located in the scripts sub-directory. Execute them within PMA and change your configuration file to fit your database structure:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = 'phpmyadmin';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = 'pma_bookmark';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = 'pma_relation';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = 'pma_table_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = 'pma_table_coords';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = 'pma_pdf_pages';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = 'pma_column_info';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = 'pma_history';

After the configurations are done, you get new features in your PMA installation. Note there is also a better support for relations using the foreign key feature while using the InnoDB database type. (more…)

This is part one of the quick review of the book “Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management” and the phpMyAdmin software.

This article/review is not just another review about phpMyAdmin, but more some information about features I haven’t used during the last years of PHP/MySQL web development.

About phpMyAdmin

PMA is a full featured tool to administrate your MySQL database server via a web browser. While the functions are almost unlimited, it’s also a powerful tool to maintain the database content even for less experienced users.

It’s already a year ago (or more) that I got the book “Mastering phpMyAdmin” as a present/reward for contributing some snippets on weberdev.com. Finally I found the time to read (most of) the book during a vacation. The book is great for webmasters using phpMyAdmin (PMA) the first time and also more advanced users. The book covers the installation, basic database interactions using PMA like simple INSERT or SELECT commands and also advanced features like the relational system provided by the phpMyAdmin software. (more…)