Web applications face constant exploitation attempts. Those with a user base must keep their users’ private data, well… private.

While the MySQL security model allows restricting users access to databases, tables and even columns, it has no built in feature for restricting the rows access within the given table.

One cannot allow a user to only update rows 0 through 99, but restrict that user from updating rows 100 to 199. Such restrictions are usually managed in the application level, by adding a necessary “… AND filtering_column = some_value…”

Many web application have the notion of an ‘admin’ account, or several such accounts, which provide greater control over the application. The ‘admin’ account is one account to which many attacks are targeted. One such attack is an attempt to

Looking back at 2008:

This has really been a crazy year. Probably the first year I truly felt I couldn’t keep up with everything that was happening around me (in a good sense). Not because of the depression in the market but rather because many different aspects of our business, community and eco-system have accelerated. Amidst these changes I have also taken on additional roles at Zend to help drive the next phases of our multi-year strategy.

For Zend this has been an important year in delivering on our long term strategy and plan. The PHP Collaboration project which we announced at the end of 2005 has really come to fruition and delivered on its promise including:

- Zend Framework: This year we have had three major releases of Zend Framework,

select td1.c1, td2.c2, td1.c1/td2.c2, -99 / 0.03    
  from testdata td1,         
       testdata td2   
 where td1.c1 = -99 
   and td2.c2 = 0.03 
 limit 1;
+------+------+---------------+------------+
| c1   | c2   | td1.c1/td2.c2 | -99 / 0.03 |
+------+------+---------------+------------+
|  -99 | 0.03 |    -3300.0000 | -3300.0000 |
+------+------+---------------+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Here DISTINCT is added to the query.  The result is incorrect:
select distinct td1.c1, td2.c2, td1.c1/td2.c2, -99 / 0.03    
  from testdata td1,         
       testdata td2   
 where td1.c1 = -99 
   and td2.c2 = 0.03 
 limit 1;
+------+------+---------------+------------+
| c1   | c2   | td1.c1/td2.c2 | -99 / 0.03 |
+------+------+---------------+------------+
|  -99 | 0.03 |     -999.9999 | -3300.0000 |

The gearmand job server written in Perl (current production server from Danga):

mysql> SELECT length(gman_do("reverse", repeat('x',10000000))) AS test;
+----------+
| test     |
+----------+
| 10000000 |
+----------+
1 row in set (49.08 sec)

The new gearmand job server written in C:

mysql> SELECT length(gman_do("reverse", repeat('x',10000000))) AS test;
+----------+
| test     |
+----------+
| 10000000 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.30 sec)

Mmm, efficiency. Oh, and are those some new MySQL UDFs? Much more coming soon…

I want you to tell me the story of how you got started with the Net.

Tell me how your passion was sparked and why it keeps coming to full flame.

Tell me why the Net matters to you, even after all of the long days, short nights and wrecked weekends.

I've been writing my story because I need to understand why I care deeply for what the Net is and what it means.

I want to read your story for the same reason.

Don't hold out on me now. I can see your data trails in my server logs: a few hundred of you trudging in from RSS subscriptions, the PHP, Mozilla and MySQL planets, Boris'