In just two days the OpenSQL Camp Europe (hosted by the excellent FrOSCon) will kick off!

We've had a few last-minute changes to the schedule, as some speakers could not make it due to visa or family issues. But we managed to keep all slots filled on both days and I think we've come up with a very nice program! In addition to the two sessions I already had, I've volunteered to take over Giuseppe's talk about Shooting from the Hip. MySQL at the Command Line.

The most up-to-date version of the schedule is on the OpenSQL Camp Wiki, I expect the remaining changes to be reflected on the …

I just wanted to send out a friendly reminder: you still have time until next Monday, 16th of August, 8:00 am (UK) to submit MySQL-related talk proposals for the Conference Series Technology & E-Business Suite 2010 conference which will take place in Birmingham (Nov. 29th - Dec. 1st). The UK Oracle User Group is looking forward to set up a dedicated track with great talks about MySQL! Thank you.

If you wonder why there hasn't been an update from me for quite a while — I just returned from two months of paternal leave, in which I actually managed to stay away from the PC most of the time. In the meanwhile, I've officially become an Oracle employee and there is a lot of administrative things to take care of... But it feels good to be back!

During my absence, Giuseppe and Felix kicked off the Call for Papers for this year's European OpenSQL Camp, which will again take place in parallel to FrOSCon in St. Augustin (Germany) on August 21st/22nd. We've received a number of …

I've been working in a fully distributed work environment for almost 8 years now (I joined MySQL AB in April, 2002). Therefore I've been reading Toni Schneider's blog post about the "5 reasons why your company should be distributed" with great interest – he raised several points that I fully agree with and which I covered in my talks about "Working for a virtual company - how we do it at MySQL" at last year's next09 conference (slides, video) and at …

I recently received a question from Robin Schumacher at Calpont, the makers of the InfiniDB analytics database engine for MySQL: "How would you recommend we try and get bundled in with the various Linux distros?"

Since this question has come up several times before, I thought it might make sense to blog about my take on this.

First of all, please note that there is a difference between "being part of the core distribution" and "being available from a distributor's package repository". The latter one is relatively easy, the former can be hard, as you need to convince the distributor that your application is worth devoting engineering resources to maintain and support your application as part of their product. It's also a space issue – distributions need to make sure that the core packages still fit on the installation …

CMake is a cross-platform, open-source build system, maintained by Kitware, Inc.

From the CMake.org home page:

CMake is a family of tools designed to build, test and package software. CMake is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files. CMake generates native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice.

It has been used for building the MySQL Server on Windows since MySQL 5.0 – the initial CMake build support was added in August 2006.

For …

Last week, my colleagues Giuseppe, Kai and myself attended the SAPO Codebits event in Lisbon, Portugal. Codebits is an annual, invite-only hacking event, which went on for three days. The venue they chose this year was the "Cordoaria", a former rope factory located in the Belém district, close to the 25 de Abril Bridge (which is an impressive sight!). I have been told that the Cordoaria is the longest building in Portugal and I have no doubts about that! The building is so long that the crew used bicycles to get from one end to the other. I've taken a number of …

This blog post is a by-product of my preparation work for an upcoming talk titled "Why you should be using a distributed version control system (DVCS) for your project" at SAPO Codebits in Lisbon (December 3-5, 2009). Publishing these thoughts prior to the conference serves two purposes: getting some peer review on my findings and acting as a teaser for the actual talk. So please let me know — did I cover the relevant aspects or did I miss anything? What's your take on DVCS vs. the centralized approach? Why do you prefer one over the other? I'm looking forward to your comments!

Even though there are several distributed alternatives available for some years now (with Bazaar, git and …

So you're a small startup company, ready to go live with your product, which you intend to distribute under an Open Source License. Congratulations, you made a wise decision! Your developers have been hacking away frantically, getting the code in good shape for the initial launch. Now it's time to look into what else needs to be built and setup, so you're ready to welcome the first members of your new community and to ensure they are coming back!

Keep the following saying in mind, which especially holds true in the Open Source world: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression!". While the most important thing is of course to have a compelling and useful product, this blog post is an attempt to highlight some other aspects about community building and providing the adequate infrastructure. This insight is based on my own experiences and my …

This time of the year is usually a very busy one, as there are plenty of events and conferences to attend. Just take a look at our calendar of OSS events on the MySQL Forge to see what I mean! Here's a quick summary of the ones that I will attend and speak at until the end of this year:

On November 14-15, I'll attend the openSQL Camp in Portland (OR), USA. I missed the first one that took place in Charlottesville (VA) in 2008, but had a lot of fun organizing the European Edition earlier this year. The upcoming one will be more like an unconference again - the list of …