TT380 - A bluffer's guide

Okay, this is the page dedicated to lots of cool freeware and trialware for doing mySQL and ColdFusion stuff.

1. http://www.microolap.com/products/database/mydesigner/

I've been playing around with a few ER diagramming/database design programs and came across one specifically for MySQL. It has a 30 day trial period, but unlike most of them it has a tutorial section in the help, and doesn't attempt to explain things as if you're a space cadet. It's well worth a look, I think it sells for around $120 US, which is probably a bit steep to justify unless you are doing this for a living, but it is pretty simple to use and the results are good. It can even hook up to your DB and create the database for you saving the job of saving the script and importing the SQL yourself ! (what I particularly like is you can instantly preview the table creation SQL as you are editing the table design, and it also helps that it isn't a generic program designed to work with a multitude of RDBMS)

The only mistake I found in the tutorial was that you need to deselect the table drawing tool before double clicking to define your table columns etc...

well worth a play if you want to experiment with this kind of thing.

Simon.


2. Questions of scalability, security, and connectivity.

The following white paper from Cisco provides a nice introduction to scalability and looks at their LocalDirector product.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/ps1894/products_white_paper09186a0080091edf.shtml

It is available as a PDF for download. There is also one of security (also in PDF), but with a network architecture perspective.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/about/ac123/ac114/ac173/ac166/small_and_midsized_business09186a00800a346b.html

You can find all the current unisys benchmark papers at

http://www.unisys.com/products/es7000__servers/hardware/benchmark__reports/index.htm

The benchmarks quoted are those of the TPC, so follow at the TPC-W link. The executive summary will give you the total cost of this sort of system.



Glyn

3. Horizontal Scaling

http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/server/story/0,10801,73688,00.html?from=story_package

If anyone has anymore then please add a comment with a URL. Thanks.