Let’s say your database grows big and you need to add additional storage. You can engage in a re-partitioning project using a backup/restore strategy, but the simplest thing to do is to start with moving indices. Here is the script to do that: Read the rest of this entry »

In order to create a key-stroke that clones a line of text in Emacs, put this in your .emacs file: Read the rest of this entry »

Emacs has two methods of killing words: kill-word kills from the point to the end of the word, kill-word-backward kills from the beginning of the word to the point. More often than not I’d like to kill the whole word with one key-stroke. Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction

Every database designer faces a decision regarding a selection of a database key type. The common practice, textbooks, and intuition suggest that numeric keys are better than character ones. And the strongest argument for numeric keys is performance - it is generally perceived that numeric keys provide for faster comparison operations inside the database thus improving search and access time.

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We’be been using a wonderful Perl web testing package HTTP::WebTest by Ilya Martynov for years . It’s quite old, but it aged gracefully except for one small problem: HTTP::WebTest’s API.pm module dies if an improper URI is passed along. Read the rest of this entry »