Did that NewsBits Thing so you can read about TiDB, a database in PHP, Code’s latest update and Rowhammer in your pocket.
Welcome to NewsBits where you’ll find the database, security, and developer news from around the net for the week ending May 4th 2018:
- TiDB gets to version 2.0.
- An update comes to MariaDB 10.0.
- FoundationDB’s progress report is in.
- PHP fans may want a SleekDB.
- Lnav is ideal for every log.
- Keep on top of changes in Kubernetes.
- Ballerina moves to center stage.
- Updates aplenty in April’s refresh for VSCode.
- gRPC.js alpha is all JavaScript gRPC.
- Keeping up with the GitHub gets easier.
- And finally… A Rowhammer in your pocket.
And now, here are those bits in full thanks to the Wayback Machine…
Database Bits
TiDB 2.0 - PingCap, the company behind the open source distributed database TiDB, have announced TiDB 2.0. TiDB is a Go-based hybrid transactional/analytical database with MySQL compatibility that sits atop of Pingcap’s Rust-based and RAFT-implementing TiKV.
Version 2.0 of TiDB has been developed and tested with an automated testing platform which uses Chaos Testing and fault injection, while work has been done to boost performance for OLAP workloads. There’s also more support for MySQL syntax and the various SQL modes, support for TLS, and lots more monitoring metrics. Both TiDB and TiKV are Apache 2.0 licensed.
MariaDB - The MariaDB Foundation announced MariaDB 10.0.35 was released, along with updates to MariaDB Galera Cluster and the C Connector. MariaDB 10.0.35’s release notes record 11 security vulnerabilities being fixed alongside updates to the XtraDB, TokuDB and InnoDB components.
FoundationDB - Two weeks in from being open sourced, FoundationDB has a progress report. It’s pretty good stuff with various early developments including plans to build a JanusGraph/FoundationDB adapter and new language drivers for Node.js, PHP, C# and Haskell in development.
SleekDB - SleekDB is another new database designed this time for managing smaller amounts of data. Built in only PHP, it’s a JSON document store with filtering, sorting and searching. It’s currently built as an embeddable data store for PHP applications.
Lnav - Got logs as files? Want to view logs? Try lnav, the Log File Navigator. It’s built for small-scale logs, so no server or setup to do. Instead, it’ll dig through a directory of logs, detect formats, uncompress compressed logs and then, merge the different logs into a merged single log view using timestamps. From that single view, you can zoom in from a log entry into the original source log file with a single key press and zoom back out as easily. There’s also filtering, SQL querying, pretty printing, and syntax highlighting. It’s all rather wonderful that it’s already made it to our essential toolbox.
Cloud Bits
Kubernetes - Finding it hard to keep up with whats coming in future versions of Kubernetes? Kubernetesstatus.com/ is here to help with a list of what just arrived and what’s landing in future versions.
Ballerina - At Ballerina.io, there’s an interesting language called Ballerina which bills itself as a cloud-native programming language based around a sequence interaction model, API gateways, services and bridges to legacy code. It first emerged in early 2017 and is now on its new domain, with new tooling including a VS Code plugin, a package distribution hub, and a conference on San Francisco coming in July.
Developer Bits
Code - The April update for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code has arrived and while the focus of development has been on improving the extension API, there’s still plenty of enhancements in the update for everyday developers. Indentation guides make it easier to line up your code blocks and “Code Actions on Save” let you customize what happens when you save a file. Got a three button mouse? Use it to select columns of text in your code. There’s visibility for NPM scripts runnable actions and header only searches for Markdown. And if you already use Code, chances are its already downloaded all these updates and is just waiting for a restart.
*gRPC.JS - Just landing as an alpha-level release from the gRPC developers is gRPC.js. It’s a pure JavaScript client for gRPC which is built on Node 9/10’s HTTP/2 implementation. It doesn’t currently handle gRPC proto files, passing that responsibility off to proto-loader. Having a native gRPC client library available will enable more maintainable gRPC-aware applications written in Node and we look forward to it reaching version 1.0.
GitHub - Weary of not finding out what’s new on GitHub till everyone else tells you? GitHub seems to think the same way and has opened the GitHub Changelog so you can find out sooner that you can now ignore white space in code reviews.
And Finally… Rowhammer memory attacks(pdf) have been around for a while, flipping bits in memory by just moving memory near that memory quickly enough. Now we’ve reached the point where it can be done in a mobile phone’s browser, using WebGL to access the GPU to do that rapid hammering. Say hello to the JavaScript GLitch as it shows how far exploiting this unpatchable problem has come.
This article was imported from the original CodeScaling blog