This Thursday (May 28th, 14:00 UTC), Lars Thalmann will give a MySQL University session on MySQL Replication: Walk-through of the new 5.1 and 6.0 features. (This session was originally scheduled for May 7th, but had to be put off due to technical problems. Apologies.) Lars is leading the replication and backup teams at MySQL, so this is one of the best opportunities to ask whatever questions you might have about new replication features in MySQL.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page.

This Thursday (May 7th, 14:00 UTC), Lars Thalmann will give a MySQL University session on MySQL Replication: Walk-through of the new 5.1 and 6.0 features. Lars is leading the replication and backup teams at MySQL, so this is one of the best opportunities to ask whatever questions you might have about new replication features in MySQL.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to.

This Thursday (April 30th, 14:00 UTC), Giuseppe Maxia will give a MySQL University session on Testing Multiple Servers With MySQL Sandbox. Giuseppe is the creator of MySQL Sandbox, and has recently announced a new Sandbox version and other interesting changes, for example the --query-analyzer option to make_sandbox (but note the date when this was announced!).

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser

This Thursday (April 2nd, 14:00 UTC), Patrick Crews will give a MySQL University session on How to Create a Test Case. This is an updated session of a talk we had in 2007, but this time it will be recorded (slides and audio). Patrick is a database engineer who works in the server QA department, so test cases are his daily bread.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL

Tomorrow, The Big Trek starts. Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana will spend the time from then on until the MySQL Conference and Expo starts travelling by rail and bus all the way from home in Montreal to California. Hence the name “Dups on Rails”. The purpose of the Big Trek is to talk about MySQL in Canadian and US universities. He’ll also arrange MySQL Meetups and go on customer visits, as people ping him.

Towards the end of the trip, as we get closer to the User Conference, Dups won’t be alone. His alter ego Colin Charles (yes, people do mix up Dups and Colin) will join him from 13 April onwards in Northern California. And at the same time, a parallel trek is started by

Mark your calendars!

Just before the Users Conference, 4 MySQL enthusiasts will tour California Universities and user groups.

This is the conclusion of the Dups on rails journey. When the heroic Dups arrives to California, he will have company. Colin Charles will tour Northern California with Dups. Yours truly and Sheeri K. Cabral will take care of the South.

Everyone is invited!

Are you in California and want to

Mark your calendars!

Just before the Users Conference, 4 MySQL enthusiasts will tour California Universities and user groups.

This is the conclusion of the Dups on rails journey. When the heroic Dups arrives to California, he will have company. Colin Charles will tour Northern California with Dups. Yours truly and Sheeri K. Cabral will take care of the South.

Everyone is invited!

Are you in California and want

Mark your calendars!

Just before the Users Conference, 4 MySQL enthusiasts will tour California Universities and user groups.

This is the conclusion of the Dups on rails journey. When the heroic Dups arrives to California, he will have company. Colin Charles will tour Northern California with Dups. Yours truly and Sheeri K. Cabral will take care of the South.

Everyone is invited!

Are you in California and

This Thursday (March 19th, 14:00 UTC), Susanne Ebrecht will give a MySQL University session on How to Use Charsets and Collations Properly. Susanne works at the MySQL Support team and is an expert in character set issues.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL University sessions. It provides integrated voice streaming, chat, whiteboard, session recording, and

This Thursday (March 12th, 14:00 UTC), Martin MC Brown will give a MySQL University session on MySQL and ZFS. MC works on the MySQL Documentation Team and has been involved with quite a few Solaris things, for example porting MySQL to openSolaris. MC has recently given MySQL University talks on developing MySQL on Solaris and about using DTrace with MySQL.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a

This Thursday (March 5th, 14:00 UTC), Konstantin Osipov will give a MySQL University session on Good Coding Style. Konstantin is the lead of the server runtime environment team, and has been around at MySQL since 2003.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL University sessions. It provides integrated voice streaming, chat, whiteboard, session recording, and more.) All MySQL

• J2ME, GlassFish, MySQL- which form a nice combination of Client, Middleware and Database technologies and our (Vadiraj, Varun and Me) idea was to give hints here and there to the students how to bring all the three technolgies to develop applications and how each fits into the holistic idea. My MySQL slides are available

• J2ME, GlassFish, MySQL- which form a nice combination of Client, Middleware and Database technologies and our (Vadiraj, Varun and Me) idea was to give hints here and there to the students how to bring all the three technolgies to develop applications and how each fits into the holistic idea. My MySQL slides are available

Today I gave my first MySQL University session as a speaker, talking about Backing up MySQL using file system snapshots. The talk went quite well (at least that was my impression) and we had ~10 people attending. The slides (PDF) and a recording of the session are now available from the Wiki page. Unfortunately the recording lacks the audio track, which is a bit of a bummer. We've submitted a support request with the DimDim folks, so hopefully they can provide us with a complete recording.

My calendar for the upcoming months is already filling up with conferences, trade fairs and other events at which I'll speak about MySQL. Here's a quick overview:

• This coming Thursday at 15:00 CET, I'll be speaking about "Backing up MySQL using file system snapshots" at the MySQL University. The session will be hosted live using DimDim, which is a great online conferencing and presentation system (Flash required). Attendance is free, so come and join me if you want to learn more about this backup technique!
• On Friday, 6th of March at 15:15 I'll give a presentation about "MySQL Backup and Security" in the

This Thursday (February 26th, 14:00 UTC), Lenz Grimmer will give a MySQL University session on Backing up MySQL using file system snapshots. Lenz is a member of the MySQL Community team and the maintainer of the mylvmbackup tool. mylvmbackup is a tool for quickly creating backups of a MySQL server's data files. To perform a backup, mylvmbackup obtains a read lock on all tables and flushes all server caches to disk, creates a snapshot of the volume containing the MySQL data directory, and unlocks the tables again. The snapshot process takes only a small amount of time. When it is done, the

This Thursday (February 19th, 14:00 UTC), MC Brown & Trond Norbye will give a MySQL University session on Developing MySQL on Solaris. MC works on the MySQL Documentation Team and has been involved with quite a few Solaris things, for example porting MySQL to openSolaris. Trond has been involved with many things, including openSolaris, as you can see from his blog.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim

This Thursday (February 12th, 14:00 UTC), MC Brown will give a MySQL University session on Using DTrace with MySQL. MC has been involved not just with documenting DTrace but also with DTrace development; see his recent blog post for details.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may register for a Dimdim account, but you don't have to. (Dimdim is the conferencing system we're using for MySQL

Next Thursday (February 5th), we're continuing our series of sessions on MySQL performance measuring and improvements with Allan Packer's presentation titled MySQL Performance and Scalability Project - Issues and Opportunities. Allan works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems, so again, expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server.

Allan is based in Australia, so note that this session will take place in the morning (Europe) or evening (APAC), respectively.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser

This Thursday (January 29th), we're continuing our series of sessions on MySQL performance measuring and improvements with David Lutz' presentation titled Scalability Challenges in an InnoDB-based Replication Environment. David works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems, so again, expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server.

David is based in California, so note that this session will take place in the morning (America) or evening (Europe), respectively.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser

This Thursday, we're continuing our series of sessions on MySQL performance measuring and improvements with Richard Smith's presentation titled Scalability by Design - Coding for Systems With Large CPU Counts. Richard works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems, so again, expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server.

Richard is based in Australia, so note that this session will take place in the morning (Europe) or evening (APAC), respectively.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser

Happy New Year!

MySQL University sessions are starting again after the winter break. This Thursday, we're beginning with Tim Cook's presentation on low-level locking in mysqld and InnoDB – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Tim works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems. Expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server and InnoDB.

Tim's based in California, so note that his session will start rather late for Europeans.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser

Due to illness, the MySQL University session "Using DTrace with MySQL" has been moved to February 12th, 2009. Sorry for the short notice (blame it on the flu which came on short notice, too.)

As a bonus, here's the MySQL University schedule for the beginning of next year:

This Thursday (December 18th), Martin "MC" Brown will talk about using DTrace with MySQL. MC is the Solaris (and, naturally, DTrace and ZFS) expert on the Sun Database Group documentation team. He's helped the openSolaris team port MySQL to openSolaris.

Note that we'll be using a new session address / Dimdim URL:

http://webmeeting.dimdim.com/portal/JoinForm.action?confKey=mysqluniversity

You can bookmark this address, since it will remain valid for all future MySQL University sessions. Remember, though, that the meeting room will

This Thursday (December 11th), Philip Stoev will talk about the Random Query Generator, a new QA tool that generates pseudo-random queries targeted to exercise a specific part of the server being tested. It then executes those queries to check for crashes or assertions or to compare the results returned from two different servers (two versions, two different storage engines, optimizer flags, etc.). It is also able to execute queries against a replication master, constantly checking that the slave is okay and has not diverged.

Towards the end of the session, Philip will share his desktop and show some live examples. Make sure to adjust your volume in

Yesterday (December 4th), Sergey Petrunia gave a presentation on what's new in MySQL Optimizer. Unfortunately, the slides didn't show up in the Dimdim presentation area, which also means that the recorded session only has Sergey's voice but not the slides. (I've filed a bug in Dimdim's issue tracker.) However, Sergey kept referring to slide numbers in his talk, so it should be fairly easy (just not as convenient as usual) to follow his recorded presentation.

The slides, together with links to the recording and the chat transcript, can be found

This Thursday (December 4th), Sergey Petrunia will highlight what's new in MySQL Optimizer, with a focus on MySQL 5.1. Since Sergey is one of the main developers in charge of MySQL Optimizer, you can expect to get some in-depth insights that only very few people could provide.

This MySQL University session will start at 14:00 UTC / 8am CST (Central) / 9am EST (Eastern) / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET / 17:00 MDT (Moscow). The virtual meeting room will open 15 minutes before the hour. Point your browser to this address.

Here's

This Thursday, Martin "MC" Brown will explain how to use memcached in MySQL deployments.

MC is the author of the memcached section of the MySQL Reference Manual, and does all other memcached documentation in the Sun Database Group, too.

This MySQL University session will start at 14:00 UTC / 8am CST (Central) / 9am EST (Eastern) / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET / 17:00 MDT (Moscow). The virtual meeting room will open 15 minutes before the hour. Point your browser