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Idiotic Interview Questions

Interviews questions always seem to be a topic that comes up frequently at a developer peer group I attend and while at work.  In a recent .NET Rocks! podcast, they touched on this topic and brought up the Fizz Buzz Test.  We have all been in interviews where we are given some ridiculous programming question, that is “intended” to show the interviewer your problem solving skills.  Or maybe (I think likely) they ask these questions because they are the stock questions, and everyone asks them.  It’s like asking someone for their strengths and weaknesses.  Do you really think people aren’t… Read More »Idiotic Interview Questions

MySQL InnoDB Tablespace

As with my other databases it should be no surprise that when using MySQL InnoDB as your database engine, the system tablespace (ibdata files) never release space back to the operating system. The filesystem space will increase as needed, if defined by the autoextend property but will never reduce. What is surprising, is there is no tool to shrink or release the free space back to the operating system. In Microsoft SQL Server, they have a shrink utility, in MongoDB you have the repairdatabase statement. With MySQL InnoDB your option is to dump and restore the database.