Just before the MySQL User Conference, Dups implemented a small little feature for Planet MySQL: “voting”. We wanted to see what a voting system might mean to you, our PlanetMySQL readers.

The question is now how to improve the voting mechanism to make it more useful. The goal is for everyone to see what you and your peers think are the best PlanetMySQL entries over a given week.

Here are some of the options:

1. Open up voting to everyone regardless of whether they are logged in or not. Currently you can only vote if you are logged in with a MySQL.com account. Let’s face it, a login gives a barrier to entry even as much as it gives us the security of knowing we won’t get spammed.

One option is to allow all to vote, within the constraints of spam control of some kind. Another option is to have voting for non-logged in users to count, but count less than those who login. This gives voters the incentive to login and magnify their voice, but allows anyone to have a vote if they choose not to login. An example would be to have a logged in vote worth 1 and a non-logged in vote worth 0.1

The problem, of course, is that we would be setting an artificial “quality” judgement on your vote.

2. We add voting links into the RSS Feed itself, so you can tell the world what you think of blog posts from within your RSS reader. We could also automate a posting of the Top voted entries on PlanetMySQL at the end of each week in case you decide not to come to the web site at all (though we hope you do come by once in a while).

3. We leave it as is!

Now it’s your turn to tell us what you think! Remember the intent of all this is for good posts to not just disappear as the feeds scroll by with ever more content.

We’ve also been asked whether there is any conspiracy to throw posts up and down by us manipulating votes. Let me answer categorically: No. We do not manipulate the votes in any way. What you vote is what you see.

A new start always provides an opportunity to reassess your way of doing things:

• “Am I doing the right things with my life?”
• “Which habits could I change — in order to be a better neighbour?” 

Since Karen Tegan Padir took over the MySQL product from Mårten Mickos, we at Sun have taken a thorough look in the mirror.  The result of this introspection allows us to publish our conclusions and new community commitments this week in conjunction with the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara. 

For those who don’t yet know Karen, let me state a few facts: 

• Karen is VP of Sun’s newly-founded MySQL & Software Infrastructure group
• She describes herself as a geek and a straight-shooter, and I can attest to both 
• She was deeply involved in Sun’s decision to acquire MySQL, as well as the subsequent integration work throughout 2008 

In my previous blog, ”MySQL Culture and Business Philosophy Goes Mainstream at Sun“, I stressed that the key point to remember is that Sun is completely committed to building a big open source-based business, and very much supportive of the various communities that Sun is engaged in. That may sound a bit abstract, so I have worked with my new boss, Karen, to spell out for the MySQL community what it actually means in practice: 

First: We shall now start releasing MySQL Community Server binaries as frequently as we release the MySQL Enterprise Server. We want everyone – community and customers — to get the best bits first from us. This is why future Monthly Rapid Updates of MySQL 5.1 will remain available for the community. Moreover, future MRUs of MySQL 5.0 will also become available for the community. 

Second: We shall focus even more on our traditional core product values of stability, Performance and Ease of Use. Like you, we hate bugs, we hate slow, we hate waiting for fixes, and we hate awkward usability — even more than we love new functionality. The MySQL 5.4 performance release, which is considerably faster than MySQL 5.0 or 5.1 in most use cases, is a case in point.

Third: We shall allocate additional resources to the health and well-being of the MySQL Community. We focus both on users and developers. We shall now devote a greater portion of our internal MySQL Engineering Team resources to reviewing and eventually merging architecturally-compatible features written by external contributors, even if those features weren’t on our own roadmap.

Finally, fourth: We shall do more to improve our internal software engineering practices. We will brush our teeth every morning and evening, exercise several times a week, and eat (mostly) healthy food. Some of us may at times still take a vodka shot, but if so, then only to be social and to provide an excuse for singing badly, but not while writing code. 

In the spirit of open-ness, please give us ideas on how we can implement these changes. Let the MySQL community team know what you think. For those at the show this week, stop Karen in the halls and introduce yourself. Above all, enjoy!

Jetlagged from transatlantic travel, I woke up in the middle of the Californian night thinking about what has changed since I arrived at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara on Sunday evening. I was pondering all the questions MySQL users and Sun colleagues were asking at the event, and what the user base was thinking out loud on Twitter yesterday.

What has changed is obviously that Sun Microsystems and Oracle announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun.

What further changes we will see as a result of that is a different story. Evidently, I don’t sit in with a crystal ball predicting what will happen next. Nor do I have insight into Oracle’s plans for MySQL, once the deal is closed. Nor am I even in a position to comment upon the acquisition, so I won’t do it.

However, what I do know and what I can say is what has not changed with MySQL:

1. There still is a huge base of MySQL users out there. They have economic interests that are independent of whoever owns MySQL. The users in the MySQL community come in all flavors, ranging from casual users to those who intimately know the inner workings of MySQL and have contributed to the code base.
2. There still is a huge talent pool of MySQL experts in Sun Microsystems, in Support, in Consulting, in Training, in Engineering, in other parts of Sun. They have a strong loyalty towards the MySQL users they have served over many years.
3. MySQL is still licensed under the GPL. The GPL license used to form a safety net for the users not certain about whether MySQL AB would follow the spirit of Open Source. It continued to be so with Sun Microsystems. And the Open Source license continues to provide a safety net for its user base, regardless of the owner of MySQL.
4. MySQL has founders, one in particular, who still haven’t fallen off the face of the planet. Moreover, their passion for MySQL and its users continues.
5. Sun Microsystems still is a separate legal entity, practising what’s known as “business as usual“. This is familiar to MySQLers from the time between Sun’s acquisition of MySQL was announced mid-January 2008 to the closing at the end of February 2008. During the period between announcement and closing, we continue to behave as separate entities, even competing with each other.
6. Part of Business as Usual is a number of product announcements at the MySQL Conference this week. I’m looking forward to these!

While I cannot and will not personally speculate about what happens next, nor about Oracle’s intentions with MySQL, I think our users are looking to what the names most inimately associated with MySQL are saying — even if they no longer work for Sun Microsystems:

• First, Mårten Mickos, MySQL AB’s former CEO and long-time SVP at Sun, has several positive comments in his Forbes interview “Why Oracle Won’t Kill MySQL”.
• Second, Michael “Monty” Widenius, MySQL AB’s co-founder, also finds many positive things to say in his blog statement “To be (free) or not to be (free)“.

My humble suggestions: Keep using MySQL! Follow the announcements from the MySQL Conference this week! Keep helping each other within the MySQL community!

Go MySQL!

MySQL 5.1 is here! It’s announced! And it’s time for the overall winner, Position 1 in the MySQL 5.1 Use Case Competition.

1. Greg Haase (Lotame Solutions Inc., Elkridge, Maryland, USA): Using Partitioning and Event Scheduler to Prune Archive Tables. See Greg’s DevZone article, and his blog.

Thanks and congratulations, Greg! I absolutely hope you are in a position to take advantage of your free MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 Pass, including a dinner with MySQL co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius.

Links:

• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/07/18/mysql-51-use-case-competition/
• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/08/26/mysql-51-use-case-competition-until-end-of-september
• http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/partitioning-event_scheduler.html
• http://blog.onefreevoice.com/

The GA announcement of MySQL 5.1 is coming, and for downloading, it’s already available, as I hope you have noticed from Giuseppe’s blog. We continue our preparations, this time by announcing Position 2 in the MySQL 5.1 Use Case Competition.

2. Guy Adams (Parallel Ltd., Milton Keynes, United Kingdom): Using Partitioning to Manage Satellite Networks. See Guy’s DevZone article.

Thanks and congratulations, Guy! I hope you too are in a position to take advantage of your free MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 Pass, including a dinner with MySQL co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius.

Links:

• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/07/18/mysql-51-use-case-competition/
• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/08/26/mysql-51-use-case-competition-until-end-of-september
• http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/partitioning_manage_satellite.html

The GA announcement of MySQL 5.1 is getting closer by the minute! So it’s time for Position 3 in the MySQL 5.1 Use Case Competition.

3. Corrado Pandiani (Football Club Internazionale Milano Spa, Milan, Italy): Using Partitioning and Event Scheduler for online logging & real-time stats. See Corrado’s DevZone article, and his blog.

Thanks and congratulations, Corrado! I hope you are in a position to take advantage of your free MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 Pass, including a dinner with MySQL co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius.

Links:

• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/07/18/mysql-51-use-case-competition/
• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/08/26/mysql-51-use-case-competition-until-end-of-september
• http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/pandiani-use-case.html
• http://blog.pandiani.com/category/mysqlen/

The GA announcement of MySQL 5.1 is close, so close that we’re seeding the mirrors (I hope you noted Giuseppe’s blog entry)! So it’s time for Position 4 in the MySQL 5.1 Use Case Competition.

4. Volker Oboda (TeamDrive Systems GmbH, Hamburg, Germany): Using the Pluggable API for TeamDrive. See Volker’s DevZone article, and the Wikipedia article on TeamDrive.

Thanks and congratulations, Volker! Your MySQL Community Contributor T-shirt is underway.

Links:

• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/07/18/mysql-51-use-case-competition/
• http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/08/26/mysql-51-use-case-competition-until-end-of-september
• http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/teamdrive_pluggable_api.html

Do you read German? Then I have two recommendations for you.

First, go read this fresh interview with the German social networking guru Klaus Eck. It’s about “a life long job application process”.

Second, go read the book “Karrierefalle Internet” (”Career trap: Internet”) by Klaus Eck. That book is what the interview is all about.

Klaus Eck’s basic statement is “go manage your online reputation before others do it for you“. He notes that he’s seen plenty of Angst amongst social media newbies about how they’re presented online, with the end result that those who are afraid don’t do anything in their defense (i.e. they don’t establish a web presence of their own), and are thus at the mercy of random comments on their real life turning up in the net. To me, the negative header of the book is rather a reason not to buy the book (”I want to steer clear of Internet, as it is a trap”), but perhaps he’s right that fear sells (”I want not to be trapped by the Internet, so I’ll buy the book”).

At any rate, I bought the book, and I did so after noticing it by coincidence at the physical bookstore Hugendubel at home in Munich. So perhaps he’s right that FUD sells.

As for the insights and structure of the book, I can only recommend it. Klaus has good suggestions and a good logic. He has thought of many Web related things I haven’t, and I find myself concurring with most of those. I would disagree mainly on his recommendation to use Twitter only in one language. Nope. The web should reflect real life. What this means for your presence on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn, or anywhere is this: If your real life is multilingual, then so should your web presence be. Sure, in real life, I don’t speak Italian to Russians. But on the other hand, I don’t see a point in keeping it a secret from the Russians, that I have an Italian blog. Analogously, if you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll see tweets in several languages. I pick the language based on who I direct the tweet at, and if you don’t read the language in question, then it’s likely that the contents are not that interesting for you, either.

Finally, I’d like to thank Klaus Eck for being one of the key sources of inspiration for my series of blogs where I “share my experiences improving my online manners through social networking websites, many of which are powered by MySQL.”. So far, I’ve done Dopplr, Picasa Web and Facebook. More to come, with time.

phpMyAdmin and MySQL Forge, along with the MySQL Build Farm initiative were the main MySQL related benefactors of Google Summer of Code 2008. phpMyAdmin got BLOB Streaming support and a simplified setup script, MySQL Forge got RSS and Atom feeds and the MySQL Build Farm got a test schedule.

Directly mentored by phpMyAdmin originator Marc Delisle, GSoC student Raj Kissu Rajandran completed the BLOB streaming support in phpMyAdmin. This is how he describes his project goals (which are now achieved):

It is often common to come across a website, especially a blog, that is built on a pairing of MySQL and PHP. Seeing as how most of those who run such websites on the Internet do not have access to a Shell account or have experience in managing applications from the command-line, applications like phpMyAdmin were built to allow the administration of MySQL databases through the convenience of a
web-base interface. Not to long ago, third-party support for streaming BLOB data was added to MySQL. This feature greatly simplifies the management of streaming content (audio, video) in and out of the database. Being both an avid programmer and frequent user of MySQL, I have decided to take upon the task of adding support for managing this feature in phpMyAdmin. The purpose of this document is to describe this feature and it’s implementation and propose that Google fund its
implementation in phpMyAdmin through the Summer of Code 2008 program.

Raj’s code is now integrated into phpMyAdmin, and he has gained phpMyAdmin committer status. More info:

• http://code.kissu.org/
• http://google-summer-of-code-2008-mysql.googlecode.com/files/RajKissu_Rajandran.tar.gz

Mentored by Michal Čihař, GSoC student Piotr Przybylski set out to rewrite the phpMyAdmin setup script. Piotr set out (and achieved) these goals:

Current phpMyAdmin setup script does its job but it isn’t easy to use by inexperienced users. Rewriting it would give them a simple setup wizard which would lead them though the entire configuration, showing only the most important options. On top of that, it would offer an automatic creation of control user and required databases, as well as automated update of existing tables in case these already exist. Advanced users would be able to switch to full configuration wizard and would also benefit from automated control user creation and database setup.

Piotr’s code is integrated into mainline (but he still has some cleanup of the security checks to do). More info:

• http://lists.mysql.com/soc/283
• http://google-summer-of-code-2008-mysql.googlecode.com/files/PiotrPawel_Przybylski.tar.gz

Mentored by MySQL Forge’s originator Jay Pipes, GSoC student Robert van der Mast developed an RSS and Atom feed for MySQL Forge. His now completed goals were set out as follows:

I will develop a RSS and Atom feeds system for MySQL Forge (http://forge.mysql.com), so that MySQL Forge users can easily track new items on Forge by just using their RSS/Atom reader. The feeds will be cached to save unnecessary server load.

Robert’s code is integrated into mainline Forge 2.0 code. More info:

• http://google-summer-of-code-2008-mysql.googlecode.com/files/RobertJonathan_vanderMast.tar.gz

Mentored by Adam Porter, GSoC student Charles Song implemented a Test Scheduler for the MySQL Build Farm Initiative. This is part of the Skoll project at the University of Maryland, “A Process and Infrastructure for Distributed Continuous Quality Assurance“. His now-achieved goal:

The MySQL Build Farm Initiative seeks to create an automated environment that tests MySQL in multiple configurations over a powerful, virtual computing grid provided by community member’s local machines.

Links:

• http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/skoll/contribute/mysql.html
• http://google-summer-of-code-2008-mysql.googlecode.com/files/Charles_Song.tar.gz
  

Other MySQL related GSoC2008 projects are listed on http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2008-mysql/downloads/list where this is the list of all eleven projects:

• A front end to the mysqlslap program
• Mysql query analyzing tool
• Adding parallelism to mysqldump
• MyBS extension for PHP
• A Test Scheduler for the MySQL Build Farm Initiative
• Memcached for MySQL Query Cache
• RBAC system system for MySQL server
• phpMyAdmin setup script rewrite
• BLOBStreaming Support for phpMyAdmin
• MySQL Forge GSoC project code by Robert van der Ma

Other references:

• http://code.google.com/soc/2008/mysql/about.html
• http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/04/so-what-is-this-community-bonding-all.html
• http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/SummerOfCode
• http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/Community_Bonding

Three weeks ago, I started my sporadic series of blog posts where I share my experiences improving my online manners through social networking websites, many of which are powered by MySQL. My first target was the traveller site Dopplr, and the second one was Google’s picture sharing site Picasa Web.

This time, I’m taking a look at Facebook. As I said in the first (Dopplr related) blog post, I feel like a slow follower in the discipline of social networking on the web. And Facebook was a true case in point, where “everybody else” was there before me (my team, my boss, my aunt, my nephew, my goddaughter, countless colleagues; you get the picture).

Actually, there’s an advantage to being a follower: It’s easy to grow your network quickly. A mere 24 h ago I wasn’t even registered on Facebook, and now, I have over a hundred confirmed friends. And the fact that we’re talking about confirmed friends I take as a testimony to the power of Facebook: People actually use Facebook, actively. My Dopplr account hasn’t filled up in nearly a month to even half the amount of Facebook contacts in less than a day. Sure, Dopplr isn’t for my aunt, nephew or goddaughter, but still — the activity level correlates with the usefulness.

The two most distinct advantages of Facebook is its worldwide coverage and its technical connectivity. The worldwide coverage is quite a bit weaker in large, well-developed non-English-speaking countries (such as Germany). There is near-zero motivation for my children (13 and 14 years old) to join, as “everyone that matters” to them is on Lokalisten.de, the older siblings of “everyone that matters” are on StudiVZ and their parents on Xing.com. Some similar situation prevails in Japan or China, but not so in Finland. There, all age groups go on Facebook. And this provides lots of value: Sharing pictures with my aunt is done with the same medium as I can ask my goddaughter’s bigger sister for a favour, i.e. using her newly-acquired driver’s license to pick up my son from Helsinki airport for a pre-Christmas party next weekend. Sure, I could have called her mobile phone, but Facebook was much less intrusive. She’s there anyway!

The technical connectivity provides “networking effects between the networks“, if you will. I have connected Facebook to my Doppler and Twitter accounts, and to my Google Reader. So status changes in Twitter propagate to Facebook. And new blog entries on Google Reader propagate to my notes / feed on Facebook. And given that, in turn, I have connected Twitter to my SMS and Google Reader to my blogs, it means that my Facebook news page gets automatically updated through my SMS tweets and blog entries. Without any further effort my side. (Sure, it was non-trivial to set up blog aggregation on Google Reader, but I had already gone through that for my home page http://kaj.arno.fi).

For those who neither tweet nor blog, automatic updates of a Facebook page may not sound like nirvana. Yet, that’s very close to what it is, within the realm of social networking on the web. What’s the purpose of tweeting or blogging or writing stuff for the web, if nobody reads what you write? Or rather, to be more reader centric, which web updates would you rather follow — those that you get easily notified about in an app where you are anyway, or those for which you have to make a conscious effort to read, by starting a new app or web page? The effort should be on the side of the writer, and with Facebook, the effort is kept to a very manageable level of setup work, after which the updates propagate.

In order for the sentence “it’s less than 24 h before I registered on Facebook” to be fully honest, let me now proceed to my summary:

	Positive experiences: Very many, quite significant + Suprisingly many friends, relatives, colleagues already connected + Good to get reminded of their existence and their daily life + Very good worldwide penetration + Great that Facebook integrates with Google Reader and my blogs + Great that Facebook integrates with Twitter, as this means that I can share things happening through SMS messages + Great that I could export an LDIF file from Thunderbird (my email program) and import them into Facebook, which based on email addresses identified already-connected friends very easily
	Negative experiences: Few, if any - Biggest irritation: When I uploaded the LDIF file at what seemingly was a peak time for Facebook, the connection broke several times — but after a sufficient number of re-tries, the time-outs didn’t reoccur - There’s a lot to learn in Facebook (private messages, public messages, updates etc.) - I didn’t find any outward-facing non-member landing page for invitations, along the lines of facebook.com/profile/kajarno
	My own confusion — no fault of the social network itself I’m using Facebook in Swedish (hey, why use a foreign language?), and this isn’t the language that the majority of my friends use in it — so I don’t know what “Upplagt”, “Anteckningar” and other similar concepts are in their languages My network presence isn’t monolingual, and all of my friends don’t read all of the languages I use. So I end up spamming those who don’t understand Swedish with updates in Swedish. On the other hand, some stuff isn’t interesting for anybody else except those who read Swedish. I just have to hope that my friends aren’t annoyed by updates in languages they don’t understand. It isn’t 100% clear to me what I should be public about. Why should I share the books I’ve read? The films I like? My favourite quotes? So far, I haven’t
	Remaining questions from my side People ask me to verify that we “worked at Polycon 1995-2000″ or “we travelled to Sorrento in 2006″ and I have verified that, but where do I update my past activities myself? And do I have any real benefit from entering past data? How do I best group my many contacts into groups, such as based on what language I use with them, where I met them, etc.? Should I invite real-life friends who are not yet on Facebook, to join? When should I share pics using Picasa Web, when using Flickr, when using Facebook? What is the intended use of “puffa” (I think it’s “nudge” in English)?

All in all, Facebook is a scalable way of maintaining a social life, to keep in contact with people with a maximum of social interaction and a minimum of technical overhead. With less than a day’s experience, I expect to use Facebook several times a week, and improve my offline real social life through online activities.

Links:

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com
• My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16….somethingverylong
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook