One week to go! Then we’ll have MySQL AB’s biggest internal meeting ever, with some 400 MySQLers being shipped to Orlando, Florida.

Almost four years ago in 2004, the company met in Cancún, Mexico. A year before that in 2003, we met in Budapest, Hungary. In 2002, we met in St Petersburg, Russia. In 2001, we met in Helsinki, Finland. In 2000, they (I wasn’t on board at that time) met in Monterey, USA. As we met last time in Cancún, we were fewer people in the whole company than last September at the Developer Mtg in Heidelberg, Germany.

I’m looking forward to meeting with all my fellow MySQLers. Besides all the working and catching-up, I expect to do some running with fellow MySQLers, share some photographs, and just enjoy spending face-to-face time.

Right now, I’m preparing for this by looking through and setting the agendas for various meetings with other teams, as well as 1on1 mtgs with my team. And I even plan to create a check-list for random beer encounters and store it in my phone. Few things would disturb me more than sitting on my flight back across the Atlantic, only to realise that I forgot to talk to somebody special, and will need to wait forever to get the next opportunity.

The 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo registration is opened!

Time flies. We’re already at our sixth Users Conference! Looking at the announcement:

Co-presented by MySQL AB and O’Reilly Media, the conference will take place April 14-17, 2008, in Santa Clara, California. The event is expected to bring together over 1,600 open source and database users from some of the most exciting and fastest-growing companies in the world, as well as from the large and active MySQL Community. The program for 2008 will include keynote presentations by Jacek Becla of Stanford Linear Accelerator and MySQL CEO Marten Mickos.

Jay Pipes, our Program Chair, has lead a huge effort in identifying the best out of the near-300 proposals for sessions. And we’re not fully done yet. A few sessions still are in the grey zone, so not all are scheduled. But I suggest you take a look at the program already!

Join us 14-17 April 2008 in Santa Clara, California for the biggest and best MySQL event yet!

Register by 26 February 2008 to save up to $200.

Links:

• UC 2008: http://mysqlconf.com/
• UC 2007: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/mysqluc2007/
• Press Release “Program Unveiled for MySQL Conference & Expo 2008″: http://press.oreilly.com/pub/pr/1885
• Clash of the DB Egos (at UC 2007): Seen the show? Read the article! http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/clash_db_egos.html
• Sessions: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/schedule/presentations/General
  
• Tutorials: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/schedule/topic/Tutorial
• Get certified: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/content/get_certified
• Speakers: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/schedule/speakers
• Sponsors: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/content/sponsors
• Exhibitors: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/content/exhibitors
• Media Partners: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/content/media_partners
• Hotel & Travel: http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/content/hotel
• Register Now: https://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/register

With 130 entries in the “MySQL” category and no MySQL-related subcategories, my blog had become impossible to search and navigate easily.

And thus I created a number of new categories for the MySQL entries within my blog. They’re listed in the left navigation bar, below the months, as well as below:

• MySQL Server, MySQL Cluster, Falcon
• Connectors: PHP, Ruby on Rails
• Tools: GUI, MySQL Workbench, MySQL Proxy
• Events: MySQL Users Conferences
• Licensing: GPL
• Architecture of Participation, Summer of Code, Virtual company
• Other: Release Policy, Documentation, Use cases

I hope this will make my blog more (re)usable.

(The picture is from this summer, when navigating the way up the Großvenediger, a 3662 m high mountain in the Hohe Tauern region of Austria.)

Local MySQL offices have hosted country-specific user or customer conferences in a number of countries this autumn:

• MySQL K.K. in Tokyo, Japan: MySQL Users Conference Japan 2007, 11-12.9.2007 at the Miraikan
• Linux Data Services in Seoul, Korea: MySQL Users Conference Korea 2007, 14.9.2007
• London, UK: MySQL Northern Europe Customer Conference, 16.10.2007 at the Cavendish Conference Centre
• Munich, Germany: MySQL Kundenkonferenz 18.10.2007 at Hilton Munich City

and we’re continuing this with two more conferences

• Paris, France: Conférence MySQL Europe du Sud 23.10.2007 in Hotel Sofitel Le Parc
• Milan, Italy: Launch of MySQL AB in Italia 8.11.2007 in Grand Hotel Villa Torretta

after which the following big one is The Big One, i.e.

• Santa Clara, California, USA: MySQL Users Conference 2008, 15-18 April 2008 in the Santa Clara Convention Center

We just concluded yesterday’s German Kundenkonferenz, with a packed (despite a local transport strike) main room in the Hilton. For me, the highlight was moderating the Storage Engine panel with Ralf Gebhardt, Jan Kneschke and Kai Voigt as vocal, knowledgeable and fun panelists in front of a very interactive audience. “With delight and a dash of horror” (adapted from a Swedish saying) I’m looking forward to moderating next week’s equivalent French panel. I anticipate that the my preparations will not be limited to a casual look in my Swedish-French dictionary.

The London, Munich and Paris event are/were similar in nature, with content of both technical and decision-maker nature. The Milan launch is lighter on the technical side, mainly an opportunity to meet the team.

Finally, you’ve still got a good week, until 30 October 2007, to propose sessions for the 2008 UC in Santa Clara.

This is a friendly reminder that we have opened our Call for Participation for the MySQL Users Conference 15-18 April 2008 in Santa Clara, California.

Yes, 15 April next year may seem far away. But 30 October this year isn’t. And that’s when the Call for Paper closes.

Some UC 2008 highlights:

• Conference theme is “Harnessing the Power of MySQL”
• We expect to bring over 1,500 open source and database users together
• Over 100 sessions, geared toward many skill levels (novice to expert)

Consider to present, especially if you belong to one or more of the below categories:

• Developer or DBA at an established or up-and-coming company
• Business manager with purchasing authority
• Strategist, business developer, CTO, CIO
• Technology evangelist, scout, entrepreneur pushing their enterprise boundaries
• Researcher, academic, programmer

To learn how to phrase your submission, click on the below picture and remember

• Be creative! Conference participants want to hear about real-world scenarios using MySQL, about ways they can be more productive, or write better code. Please submit original session and tutorial ideas that focus on hands-on instruction and real-world examples.
• Be descriptive! Include in your proposal as much detail about the planned presentation as possible. The more we know about what you plan to present, the better.
• Be specific! Proposals which are vague or cover too much material are unlikely to be accepted. If you think your proposal covers too much of a topic, consider submitting two proposals which split the material into different sessions.

Last Sunday, just before the MySQL Dev Meeting in Heidelberg ended, we went to see a falconry. Strictly speaking, the German Raptor Research Centre isn’t a falconry (which is a commercial venture for raising falcons), but a privately funded research station dedicated to the preservation of birds of prey, or “Eagles, vultures & co” as they say on their home page at deutsche-greifenwarte.de. Their actions over the past 30 years have given concrete results for many raptors, such as the eagle-owl (”Uhu” in German and Swedish), which is no longer on the list of endangered species in Europe. The German Raptor Research Centre has successfully set out 37 sea eagles (Seeadler, havsörn) in Central Europe, an admirable investment in nature which now including second and third generation offspring has grown to about 400 eagles.

Through a donation in part from MySQL GmbH, in part from MySQL AB, but mostly from individual MySQLers attending the Heidelberg Dev Mtg, Jim Starkey and I had the pleasure of handing over a cheque of 4500 euros to Bettina Fentzloff, the wife of the research centre’s founder, Claus Fentzloff, who brought another falcon for the audience of MySQLers to admire. I hope the donation will enable the Deutsche Greifenwarte to give freedom (as in speech) to many birds of prey in Europe and worldwide!

Jim, as the creator of the Falcon engine, seemed to have a good hand also with the namesake birds.

As noted already in March and described more closely in July, we had a MySQL Developer Meeting in Heidelberg, opened up for selected members of the MySQL community. Since yesterday, I’m back and reflecting upon how it all went.

The first reflection is that I’m biased, since I was organising the meeting together with above all Patrik Backman (for the agenda) and Georg Richter (for the lion’s share of all real work, such as the coordination with our venue, Marriott Hotel). But I would still like to concur with the many MySQLers who think it was “the best MySQL Developers Meeting ever“.

So what made the meeting a success?

We got plenty of work done. Our motto was “Working Together“, making use of finally being together while going about our already defined goals. We had next to no overall one-to-many presentations (the type where each VP in turn preaches his favourite themes and people doze off waiting for the status report to end). Instead, each small development team met with other small development teams, based on detailed advance planning on which teams really need to meet. And we had plenty of seemingly random one-on-one corridor interactions, many of which were carefully pre-planned by goal-oriented meeting attendees.

We had lots of fun. We met in five-six different restaurants in the Old Town of Heidelberg. We had a great river boat cruise. We had a good team event seeing the Falconry close to Heidelberg. We went to the Kulturbrauerei to see how beer is brewed. And we concluded the team event by a superb evening in the old castle of Heidelberg. We ended that evening by some country-wise singing, started by the Ukraine and including the largest (employee-wise) countries of Germany, Russia, the US, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Australia, and Italy.

Our infrastructure was working. Heidelberg Marriot was our best-working hotel so far. Excellent food (including edible, healthy options, but not totally forgetting the mandatory junk). Internet worked all the time, even in the rooms. And this was no coincidence. Hey, this was Germany. And we have plenty of locals in Germany, and in particular, Georg met plenty of times with whomever needed to be seen locally from an organisation standpoint — right in front of his doorstep. (No wonder Georg got standing ovations at our closing Gala Dinner at Heidelberg Castle.)

We improved our meeting practices. We followed through on some of our innovations from smaller team meetings (like the one last December in Berlin). Team Leads were in charge of the days being but to productive use — with over 150 people, no single individual can ensure that time is used efficiently be all Developers. We insisted on good meeting preparations, and good meeting notes being talked. We spread the last-minute notes in outdoor roll-calls each morning, and in the daily Heidelberger Nachrichten (”Heidelberg Chronicle”) handouts.

We had Team Exhibitions and MySQL University Sessions. Nearly all thought that the Team Exhibitions invigorated all of us — where proud MySQLers demoed what they themselves had identified as Cool Stuff to be highlighted for their fellow MySQLers. And the twelve University Sessions spread the knowledge of the intimate details of how to code MySQL.

We had external guests, both customers and community members. Both categories gave us positive feedback for having been invited. We are deeply thankful for the input they gave us, Keeping It Real. But not only did they keep us real — they also made us a lot more polite and courteous than at some previous internal meetings. I heard very few negative comments or raised voices. Concerns were not wiped under the rug, but they were raised in a very constructive manner.

Thank you to all participants, external and internal, which made this event possible!

One of the most appreciated keynotes at the ongoing Japanese MySQL Users Conference was by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, the creator of the Ruby language.

Me and Matz at MySQL UC Japan Day 1 2007-09-11

Matz was preceded by an impressive set of keynoters, moderated by MySQL K.K. President Larry Stefonic, also Senior Vice President of Asia Pacific at MySQL AB :

• His Excellency Mr. Stefan Noreén, Ambassador of Sweden to Japan
• Mårten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB
• Masahiko Yoshida-san, Director, Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd.
• Kenji Mukai-san, Vice President, General Manager, IT Architecture Solutions Unit, Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation
• Hirokazu Seto-san, Senior Manager, Alliance & Solutions, Marketing & Operations, Dell Inc.

Matz carries the title of Fellow at Network Applied Communication Laboratory Ltd. For the predominantly business oriented audience, Matz described the history of Free Software, of Open Source, and of Ruby, mentioning the mandatory names: Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, and, for Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson. With Linus, Matz shares the original motivation for starting their respective now-famous Free Software project: Fun!

The presentation was a great success and even Matz’s jokes were translated into English, creating a time-delayed wave of laughter in the non-Japanese part of the audience. I wonder whether my own afternoon session in English will be equally well treated, when translated into Japanese.

In his OSCON keynote last Thursday (26 July 2007), Bill Hilf of Microsoft described his perspective of the “two steps forward, one step backward” relationship between Microsoft and the world of Open Source. Amongst the steps forward, I count the establishment of a web site microsoft.com/opensource, releasing some Microsoft software under an OSI compliant license, and — specifically to MySQL — the mentioning of the MySQL Connector for Visual Studio in his OSCON presentation.

Microsoft seems to be acknowledging that there is a heterogeneous world out there. It’s not “all proprietary” versus “all Open Source”. The community mixes and matches at will.

Many might think there are few commonalities between MySQL and Microsoft. But there are more than you’d think, and they’re not limited to the common first letter of the alphabet.

The biggest commonality is WAMP. A simple real-world observation is that plenty of the organisations deploying LAMP applications, have developed them in whole or in part under WAMP.

MySQL doesn’t have a platform agenda, so we want to make WAMP easy to use. If WAMP turns out to be good enough not just for development, but also for deployment, great! And there MySQL and Microsoft have a common interest: Making WAMP attractive enough for production deployments, as opposed to being a mere playing ground for LAMP as The Real Thing.

So while you can expect MySQL to continue to want to excel as the M in LAMP, and while I suspect it’s a safe bet to expect Microsoft to continue to have a platform agenda, I don’t think anybody should expect a dogmatic, black and white, all-or-nothing world. In reality, customers and users mix and match, and it’s about time we all acknowledge that.

Bill Hilf made two points in his OSCON keynote that I’d like to comment upon as for how they apply to MySQL. In both cases, I’ll conclude with a plea to contact me, if the thinking applies to you.

First, he pointed out the order-of-magnitude technical improvements that could very simply be made to the interface between IIS and PHP, once key IIS developers were connecting with key PHP developers. Such opportunities for improvements exist only if the products have been living in complete isolation from each other. And that’s not the case with MySQL and Windows, which have peacefully coexisted since last century. This means that the technical fruits to be picked when making WAMP more attractive won’t hang quite that low. But we do know that there are technical hurdles to overcome, and documentation to be improved, specifically when it relates to deployment of WAMP applications. Should you be one of the casualties thereof, I’d love to hear from you about how we should make WAMP more attractive. Email me at firstname@mysql.com!

Second, he pointed to the fear of the unknown, to the extent Linux is unknown to the Microsoft user base. “Can I go visit a Linux website?” was one of the questions he had been asked, not tongue-in-cheek, but for real. My take on this is that there is a perceived divide “Microsoft vs. Open Source” bigger than the divide out in the real world of IT. And I don’t think it’s in the interest of the user base to be lead to believe that solutions have to be fundamentalist. Paradoxically, I don’t even think it’s in Microsoft’s interest. I think the world’s perception of MySQL’s user base may be skewed towards LAMP rather than WAMP, not just because L, A, M and P are all Open Source as opposed to W, but also because of a relative lack of acknowledgement for WAMP as a development (and deployment) stack. Should you have deployed large WAMP apps, I’d love to hear from you about WAMP specific success stories. Email me at firstname@mysql.com!

I can see history repeating itself in strange ways. In the early days, many picked MySQL “for development and testing only”, fully convinced to deploy on other databases (and that was definitely the case with myself in the 1990s). But the “testing” phase dragged on and on, and in many cases MySQL turned out to be “good enough” for deployment.

That’s how MySQL grew.

With proper attention from MySQL, Microsoft and our respective communities, perhaps WAMP in a growing number of scenarios can enjoy the same benefit of being “good enough for deployment”?

Today at OSCON, MySQL co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius and I presented the “State of the Dolphin” lightning talk.

My slides for this preso weren’t too graphic, which makes them all the easier to reuse in this blog:

Use our new software!

• Use MySQL 5.1, it‘s soon going RC
• Use Falcon, it‘s soon going Beta (new transactional storage engine, faster than InnoDB on large servers)
• Use MySQL Workbench (ER Tool), Now Beta
• Use MySQL Proxy, just released
• PHPers: Use mysqlnd (Native Driver)

Go test MySQL 5.1!

• We‘re happy with the quality
  • More stable than 5.0 was four months after GA
  • RC happening very soon, GA within a few versions after that
  • A better MySQL 5.0 (thousands of small fixes)
• We‘re happy with the new functionality
  • Table / Index Partitioning
  • Row-based replication – Transfers data instead of commands
  • Full-text indexing parser plugins – Flexible full text search
  • Disk-based Data Support for MySQL Cluster
  • Replication Support for MySQL Cluster
  • XPath Support - helps any customer wanting to better navigate and search XML documents stored in MySQL
  • Internal Task Scheduler (Events)

Other goodies coming soon (5.2, 6.0, …)

• Global Backup API
• Falcon and Maria (MyISAM++) storage engine
• Further new storage engines
• Hash & Merge joins (faster subselects)
• Federated tables over ODBC
• Foreign key support for all engines

Participate in our Development!

• Report bugs! Test them! Submit patches!
• Hang out on Freenode IRC #mysql-dev
• Subscribe to commits@lists.mysql.com to see our code reviews
• Attend MySQL University, the foremost education for MySQL developers (of C/C++ code, not apps)
• MySQL Forge: List your MySQL apps! Upload your code snippets! Fix the missing documents!
• Go visit MySQL Forge Worklog
  • Voting for best features starting soon

Hiring!

We are hiring outstanding C/C++ developers with systems or database engineering experience.
Visit www.mysql.com/jobs or email resume to jpugh@mysql.com