MariaDB 11.4 introduced many advanced features. One that grabbed my attention is the general support of packages for stored routines. Although this was previously available by activating the Oracle compatibility mode, now the feature is available generally out-of-the-box. This will help you to significantly enhance the organization of database development within a MariaDB environment. Packages provide a modular approach to managing database logic. This addition aligns MariaDB more closely with other advanced database systems that have long utilized packages, such as Oracle, and sets it apart in that regard from other open-source relational databases that don’t support packages.
Packages in MariaDB allow you to group related stored procedures, functions, variables, and other elements together into a single unit. This structure provides several benefits, including improved code organization, enhanced reusability, and simplified maintenance. Prior to this update, each stored procedure and function in MariaDB existed independently, which could lead to a cluttered schema and more complicated management of complex business logic when implemented in the database. Packages address this issue by providing a way to logically group related routines.
A while back I wrote up a blog post on how to use Redis as a chat history component with LangChain. Since LangChain already had Redis chat history available as a component, it was quite convenient to write a client application.
But, that's not the same with langchaingo which is a Go port of LangChain. I am going to walk through how to do the same, but for Valkey (not Redis). Valkey is an open-source alternative to Redis. It's a community-driven, Linux Foundation project created to keep the project available for use and distribution under the open-source Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) three-clause license after the Redis license changes.
In the previous edition of the YotG newsletter, the wave of Generative AI hype was probably at its all-time high. Today, while Generative AI is still talked about and trialed, the hype is subsiding. Skepticism is settling in, and for good reason. Reports from the field show that only a handful of deployments are successful.
At its current state, Generative AI can be useful in certain scenarios, but it’s far from being the be-all and end-all that was promised or imagined. The cost and expertise required to evaluate, develop, and deploy Generative AI-powered applications remains substantial.
You've probably heard a lot about zero-trust security lately, and for good reason. As we move more of our applications and data to the cloud, the traditional castle-and-moat approach to security just doesn't cut it anymore. This makes me come to the realization that we can no longer have a "trust but verify" approach, assuming everything behind the corporate firewall is safe.
"Never trust. Always verify." Now that’s the stance we need to take going forward.
A modernized database will help you focus on building innovative solutions rather than investing your time and effort in managing these legacy systems.
Based on the scale of your existing data warehouse processes or jobs, it can be an enormous task to modernize. Choosing a phased approach to this migration can mitigate any risks early on and can ensure a smooth journey overall.
TL; DR: Hands-on Agile #62: From Backlog Manager to Product Manager
What does product success mean?
In this energizing Hands-on Agile Meetup, David Pereira discussed the challenges of being a product manager and how to move from managing the Product Backlog to driving value. Expect thought-provoking thoughts, actionable insights, and a bit of unconventional product management.
Generative AI (GenAI) has shown immense potential in transforming various sectors, from healthcare to finance. However, its adoption at scale faces several challenges, including technical, ethical, regulatory, economic, and organizational hurdles. This paper explores these challenges and proposes prompt decomposition as a viable solution. By breaking down complex queries into more straightforward, manageable tasks, prompt decomposition can optimize resource utilization, improve transparency, and enhance the overall efficiency of GenAI systems. We also discuss other techniques that can facilitate the widespread adoption of GenAI.
Introduction
Generative AI (GenAI) models, such as GPT-4, have revolutionized how we approach complex problems in various fields. Despite their potential, scaling GenAI for broader applications presents significant challenges. This paper aims to identify these challenges and explore how prompt decomposition and other techniques can help overcome them.
In modern web development, fetching data from APIs is a common task. There are multiple ways to achieve this, including using libraries like Axios, the native Fetch API, and Angular's HttpClient. In this article, we will explore how to use these tools for data fetching, including examples of standard application code and error handling. We will also touch upon other methods and conclude with a comparison.
1. Introduction to Data Fetching
Data fetching is a critical part of web applications, allowing us to retrieve data from servers and integrate it into our apps. While the Fetch API is built into JavaScript, libraries like Axios and frameworks like Angular offer additional features and more straightforward syntax. Understanding these approaches helps developers choose the best tool for their specific needs.
Lummi is ending the era of boring stock photos by enhancing creative workflows with high-quality, royalty-free, AI-generated images. Dive in and learn how Lummi is going to help you create captivating and unique designs and change the way you create.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not just revolutionizing the tech industry; it's fundamentally changing how developers, engineers, and architects approach their work. As AI continues to advance at a breakneck pace, it's crucial for tech professionals to understand its current state and future potential.
In this post, we'll explore how AI is transforming software development practices, driving innovation, and reshaping the tech landscape. Most importantly, we'll emphasize how AI is not replacing humans, but rather empowering those who embrace it to become dramatically more efficient and productive.
Testing on a wide range of real-world devices, operating systems, and OS versions can be difficult. You already know it’s true and so, device cloud is becoming essential more than ever.
Furthermore, we can find mobile devices with varying screen sizes, memory, CPU power, and so on in the wild, which complicates matters. However, to provide great apps to your customers, you must conduct tests on real devices.
Choosing the right ecommerce platform is important not only for online retailers. It’s important for businesses whose products are directly related to such platforms and must work with them shoulder-to-shoulder. Magento clearly stands out in...
It’s quite surreal to type that WPBeginner turns 15 years old today!
Time flies when you’re having fun especially with such an amazing community of website owners, small businesses, and web professionals. YOU ARE the best part of WPBeginner!
Like every year, I will take a few minutes to share all the major things that are happening in the business as well as my personal life.
But more importantly, to celebrate this big milestone, we’re doing a HUGE birthday giveaway with over $50,000+ in prizes. There will be 215 lucky winners!
As many of you know, I have been using WordPress since I was 16 years old, and I started WPBeginner in 2009 when I was in college at age 19.
Ever since then, I’ve been fully committed to the WordPress community, and WordPress plays a huge role both in my life as well as my family’s life.
My son Solomon is now 7 years old, and we attended WordCamp Europe together last month in Turin, Italy. The event was a lot of fun, and it was really cool to see Solomon attend the presentations, chat with sponsors, and really embrace the community.
We as a family are continuing our travels around the world, exploring new cultures, and meeting local WPBeginner readers.
Here are some photos from our travels:
One of the best parts about running a fully remote online company is the flexibility it offers us. We have team members in over 50 countries now, and my goal is to visit at least few more countries this year. Side note: yes we’re hiring.
Also if you didn’t get a chance to read my 2023 recap, I highly recommend checking it because I shared lessons learned from last year.
WPBeginner Updates
We have had quite an amazing year at WPBeginner, and I’m really proud of all the things we’ve been able to accomplish.
Of course, none of this would be possible without your continued support, so THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.
Here are some of the big updates that happened on WPBeginner in the last 12 months:
1. We Launched WPBeginner Pro Services
One of the top requests we got from our reader survey was to offer affordable WordPress development and website management services.
Our Pro Services offer affordable WordPress development and website management for businesses of all sizes.
Here are all the professional WordPress services we have added for you:
Custom WordPress Design & Development: Looking for a custom website design? Stop wasting time on Upwork and other marketplaces. Let our expert team build your dream website for you.
Hacked site repair: If your website ever get hacked, you can hire us to remove any malicious code, clean up the hack, and restore your WordPress site in no time.
A lot of our readers rely on us for expert recommendation on the best WordPress plugins, web tools, and themes for specific use-cases.
This year, we launched the WPBeginner Solution Center where we’re writing detailed reviews of the best business tools for your website, and along with our expert review, you can also read reviews from actual users too.
Here are a few premium WordPress product reviews on WPBeginner:
WPForms Review: a detailed review of the most beginner friendly form plugin that’s used by over 6 million users.
Hostinger Review: a thorough review of one of the fastest growing WordPress Hosting companies.
Divi Review: detailed analysis of one of the most popular multipurpose theme and page builder.
MemberPress Review: expert analysis on the most popular WordPress membership and course plugin that’s helping creators earn over $1 billion dollars each year.
If you own a WordPress theme or plugin and want to get it listed on WPBeginner’s Solution Center? Simply submit an application form and our team will be happy to consider your product or service.
Also if you find a plugin in the list that you’re using on your website, add your review to help other readers.
3. Contributing to WordPress and Open Source
At WPBeginner, we have always been big supporters of open source.
As part of our Five for the Future commitment, we now sponsor 9 WordPress core contributors. These people spend 194 hours every single week helping to make WordPress the best content management system on the planet.
We also released a free Search & Replace Everything plugin on WordPress.org that makes it easy to do bulk updates on your WordPress site.
This is very helpful especially if you want to update a link on every page, change an image that’s used in multiple areas, or make bulk changes when you’re moving your site.
4. Global Sponsor for All WordPress Community Events
WPBeginner joined the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2024. That means we’re sponsoring every WordCamp on the planet!
With our global sponsorship, WordCamps across the globe can spend substantially less time worrying about fundraising and focus more on bringing the best WordPress content for local WordPress communities.
5. New Acquisitions, Investments, and Product Launches
In 2018, I created the WPBeginner Growth Fund as a way to invest in awesome WordPress-focused companies that are solving the problems that you, our readers, want us to help with.
In the last 12 months, we’ve made several big acquisitions and investments in the ecosystem:
We invested in GrooveHQ, a top-rated customer support help desk software. Over 2,000 businesses use GrooveHQ to deliver exceptional customer service. GrooveHQ comes with all the tools you need to deliver exceptional customer support including: a shared inbox, live chat, smart workflows, reporting, integrations, and cutting-edge AI features. Here’s the full background story.
In October, Seahawk Media joined the WPBeginner Growth Fund. This premier WordPress agency provides development, design, maintenance, migration, support, and other world-class services to 1,000+ brands including DreamHost and GoDaddy. Here’s the full background story.
Remember Envira Gallery and Soliloquy? Long-term readers will know that I built these product, but had to sell them at the end of 2017. I’m excited to welcome them back home. Along with that, we also acquired NextGEN Gallery and the Photocrati theme.
We completely revamped WP Charitable, so it’s easier than ever to launch and run successful donation & fundraising campaigns. The plugin comes with a visual campaign builder, and all the powerful features like recurring donations, peer to peer fundraising (aka crowdfunding), actionable reports, and more. Here’s the full background story.
We launched SEOBoost, a powerful content optimization tool that helps you use A.I. and NLP to grow your organic traffic and SEO rankings.
We acquired LowFruits, an SEO tool that helps you find keyword ideas that are easy to rank for. This way you can start writing the right content that will bring traffic faster.
We acquired Beacon.by, a professional lead magnet creator to help you generate more leads from your website. This tool helps you turn your blog posts into eBooks or design beautiful eBooks from scratch.
We also took an investment stake in Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, and more.
I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with the Growth Fund, and it’s really amazing to see the impact our companies are making both in the WordPress ecosystem as well as the larger open web.
A lot of new readers ask me how do we make money at WPBeginner, when we give away all our WordPress tutorials for free?
Yes, we have a huge library of WordPress video courses that are completely free for everyone.
WPBeginner is funded 100% through the support of our readers like you.
My various companies develop premium WordPress plugins to help you grow your website. These plugins are built with the same beginner-friendly approach you know and love from WPBeginner, and they have powerful features to take your website to the next level.
When you buy a license for any of my premium plugins, you’re not only helping make your website better, but you’re also helping support WPBeginner and our mission.
My company, Awesome Motive, now has over 330+ team members across the world, and all of us are committed to help you build a better website!
Here’s a list of our plugins that you should check out. Collectively, they’re being used on over 25 million websites. Your support means a lot to us whether you use the free version or purchase a premium license — we are here to serve.
I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us in this journey. I really do appreciate all of your retweets, personal emails, content suggestions, and the interactions at the events.
I also want to say special thank you to everyone who’s using our plugins because that enables us to keep bringing more free tutorials on WPBeginner.
You all are AMAZING and without you, there is no WPBeginner.
