IT – Page 6 – Frankie Inguanez

Category: IT

Configuring MySQL Workbench with MAMP on Mac OS X Lion

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

Installing MAMP on Mac OS X Lion is surely an easy way of getting Apache, PHP and MySQL working on your system. If you plan on using MySQL Workbench you will need to do some additional steps.

Create the missing my.cnf file.
1. Open a terminal window.
2. Create the file by typing:
  sudo touch /etc/my.cnf
3. Change the owner of the file to your username:
  sudo chown fraki /etc/my.cnf
Create a new server instance and shown in my previous post: MAMP, MySQL Workbench and WordPress setup guide
Edit the server instance settings as follows:
1. Set the MySQL Server start command to:
  /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh
2. Set the MySQL Server stop command to:
  /Applications/MAMP/bin/startMysql.sh
3. Set the MySQL Server status command to:
  ps xa | grep “/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/[m]ysqld”

: Configuring MySQL Workbench on OS X Lion with MAMP

Keep checking through the guide for additional configuration.

SSL Certificates

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

At some point any Web Developer would need to secure part of a site and therefore require an SSL certificate. There are different options available depending on the use and here is a short post documenting the various options:

Free for Open Source Projects: Some providers are willing to offer free SSL certificates for open-source projects such as GoDaddy.com, obviously some terms and conditions apply which one must read. More details can be found here.

Free with Hosting Plan: Some Web Hosting providers would include a free SSL certificate if you buy a hosting plan. Generally the offer is for the first year with competitive renewal pricing. Just to name a few: HostColor.com, DomainAvenue.com and HostGator.com

Free SSL Community: A growing community called StartSSL are offering an entry level service for free for basic used and limited warranty which might well satisfy your needs and therefore worth a check.

Comparison Charts: If none of the above suits you then you might have to actually buy an SSL certificate, not before doing the appropriate research. WhichSSL is a dedicated site to aid in the selection of the appropriate certificate authority or SSL vendor to choose with the help of a comparison chart. More comparisons can be found in Wikipedia.org and SSLShopper.com. Your research might also payoff by finding some promotional offers and/or discounts.

Self-Signed Certificates for Development: Well if you need a certificate just for development purposes then you can sign one yourself as shown in my previous post.

Self-Signed SSL Certificate

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

If you are planning on developing or customizing some web systems such as WordPress or Magento, then at one point you will need some security. You might want to sign the SSL certificate yourself. A number of guides exists for this, for Windows Systems I found the one by Shivprasad Koirala to be very intuitive and for Unix systems the one by Heroku and Scott Baker are best. Here are the steps required:

Check that openssl is installed by running the following command in a terminal:
which openssl
If no such file is found then you need to install. Here are the possible installation methods
1. Mac OSX – Via Homebrew: homebrew install openssl
2. Windows – Download software package.
3. Linux (Debian/Ubuntu Variants) – Guide – sudo apt-get install openssl
4. Linux (RedHat Variants) – Guide – yum install openssl
Generate the keys for the Certificate Authority
openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 3650 -key ca.key -out ca.crt
Generate the private key for your server
openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 4096
Create the certificate signing request to be signed (leave challenge password and organization name empty)
openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
Sign your certificate
openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt
Optionally remove the password
openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.key.nopass

For some documentation about how to use openssl check the official site.

Subtypes or Roles for parties

Posted on 2012-02-10 by Frankie

Recently I participated in a discussion of a common problem in data modelling. The question is whether to represent parties (groups) as roles or as subtypes (generalisation hierarchy).

When designing the Conceptual Data Model, parties can be represented as subtypes provided there is a common context amongst sub-types. In the Logical Model, subtypes should be represented only if each subtype has a unique concept that the others don’t.

You can read view the LinkedIn discussion here and/or see my Short notes on Barker’s ERD Notation.

MAMP, MySQL Workbench, WordPress installation and setup guide for MAC

Posted on 2012-01-31 by Frankie

Another task that I needed to do after buying my Mac was to get my Web toolkit working. Apache, MySQL and PHP are very conveniently managed by MAMP, WordPress is as straight forward as always. MySQL Workbench required some fine tuning but managed to fix it properly.

Decided to document everything as I went along and prepared a well documented guide with some of my personal recommendations. Hope you will find it useful and as always all feedback is welcome.

MAMP, MySQL Workbench and WordPress setup guide

Remote Access a system across different OS (A TeamViewer Guide)

Posted on 2012-01-30 by Frankie

One of my first tasks I wanted to be able to do after getting my Mac was to be able to remotely connect to my servers and a number of other trusted systems for support. I wanted to try a number of options and my first serious attempt was with TeamViewer.

My Laptop is a Mac, my Home-PC is Ubuntu Linux and my wife uses Windows XP. I installed version 7.0 of TeamViewer on each OS and got remote access in no time. Thought of creating a short guide on the subject even though the application is very self intuitive.

So here is the guide to getting remote access across different Operating Systems using TeamViewer: TeamViewer Guide

NTFS Read/Write support on Mac OSX Lion

Posted on 2012-01-19 by Frankie

One of the first problems I encountered on my Mac was how to manage some external drives using NTFS. After reading a number of blogs, postings and articles I found the one by Sergey Vasilyev to be the best. The following is a quick guide to getting NTFS read/write support on OSX Lion.

Tuxera MacFuse 2.2: Download Tuxera MacFuse 2.2 from here and install.
NTFS-3G: Download NTFS-3G from here and install.
fuse_wait: Update the fuse_wait script by downloading and installing the setup from here.

Next time you connect a storage device with NTFS you should be able to read/write from/to it.
Do note that there are a number of paid alternatives and a more detailed explanation can be found in the original blog of Sergey Vasilyev at http://blog.nolar.info/ntfs-3g-in-mac-os-x-lion-10-7-with-read-write-support/

ERD Modelling using Barker’s Notation

Posted on 2012-01-16 by Frankie

A key process in database development is obviously database modelling and the main diagrams used are ERD. A number of notations exist, some particular to evangelised by particular DBMS. Here I am documenting a short course/notes about ERD modelling using the Barker’s notation, which is greatly adopted by Oracle.

As usual here is the link, do feel free to comment!

Short notes on Barker’s ERD Notation

SQL for not registering employees for conflicting appointments!

Posted on 2011-12-14 by Frankie

I was once asked by a fellow colleague if it was possible to have an SQL statement that would not allow employees from being registered to events that occur simultaneously.

Scenario

Consider a database that stores a list of persons and a list of events. Employees would eventually be registered as event attendees. It is possible that multiple events occur at the same time and therefore it is required that the SQL statement prevent any persons from being registered as attendees of conflicting events. It was required that the solution be all in one SQL statement for some reason whatsoever.

The SQL solution is found attached together with a supporting report! As always all feedback and queries are welcome!

Oracle DBMS 11g Release 2

Posted on 2011-12-12 by Frankie

Out of sheer curiosity I had decided at the beginning of the year not to satisfy myself with Oracle Express Edition and started experimenting with Oracle 11g Release 2. It wasn’t long before I got it up and running on Windows systems and was able to administer it with ease thanks to the ample documentation found. The same can be said for installation on Red Hat Linux which is officially supported by Oracle. Being a little bit curious I wanted to test it on my two favorite operating systems, CentOS and Ubuntu.

Well it wasn’t all that easy and there isn’t much documentation for those OSs. I spent a lot of time reading various postings then testing and experimenting myself, documenting all along the way. Finally I managed to get Oracle working for CentOS 5.5, Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 11.04 with good documentation. This will be a continuous work in progress and will plan to keep updating it.

Today I found some time to fix the presentation of the document and decided that it is fine time to share it with the public. So here is the link in the way that I would have loved to have found it on the net: Oracle 11g R2 Guide

As usual all feedback is more than welcome!