Chief Corporate Architect at Oracle, been at Oracle since 1986, technology and architecture decisions, responsible for all open source at Oracle. Company-wide initiatives on standards management and security — http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2010/public/schedule/detail/12440.

Where MySQL fits within Oracle’s structure.

Oracle’s Strategy: Complete. Open. Integrated. (compare with MySQL’s strategy: Fast, Reliable, Easy to Use).

Most of the $$ spent by companies is not on software, but on integration. So Oracle makes software based on open standards that integrates well.

Most of the components talk to each other through open standards, so that customers can use other products, and standardize on the technology, which makes it much more likely that customers will continue to use Oracle.

Oracle invested …

Not My Sequel.

• Share this on Facebook
• Tweet This!
• Share this on del.icio.us
• …

Perspectives on the IBM patent hoo-ha. Karmasphere lands funding. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# IBM denied breaking its open source patent promise, claimed TurboHercules a member of organizations founded and funded by Microsoft, other competitors. Perspectives on the IBM patent hoo-ha: Florian Mueller, Simon Phipps, Matt Asay, Jim Zemlin, Eric Raymond.

# Oracle will …

Brian Aker parted ways with the mainstream MySQL release, and with Sun Microsystems, when Sun was acquired by Oracle. These days, Aker is working on Drizzle, one of several MySQL offshoot projects. In time for next week's MySQL Conference & Expo, Aker discussed a number of topics with us, including Oracle's motivations for buying Sun and the rise of NoSQL.

The key to the Sun acquisition? Hardware:

Brian Aker: I have my opinions, and they're based on what I see happening in the market. IBM has been moving their P Series systems …

I’m excited to share the news that Oracle ACE program has been extended to cover MySQL community now and Pythian’s Sheeri Cabral has become the very first Oracle ACE Director in MySQL expertize area. It’s a special privilege for me to blog about it because I had a pleasure to nominate Sheeri in the first place. Being an Oracle ACE Director myself and knowing what’s involved, I believed that if Oracle ACE program is extended to MySQL, Sheeri must be the number one candidate.

It’s impossible to overestimate Sheeri’s role in the MySQL community — her advocacy for the technology and commitment to building and supporting the community. She’s been presenting about MySQL …

There have been a number of April fools jokes today so I thought I’d add my own to the list. While this sounds unexpected it’s actually no joke.

I just accepted a position with Oracle yesterday but I can’t say any more about the details until the MySQL users conference in a few weeks.

A special thanks to Lenz, Kaj & Giuseppe that championed everything to make it all happen, I really didn’t have to do anything other then accept.

This is the 184th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. I’ve edited a couple of Log Buffers before, but this is the first time I get to post directly to the Pythian blog. Just one of the many perks of being a Pythian employee ;)

On the Oracle front:

It is always good to start the day with a pop quiz to get the brain into gear: Charles Hooper posted a 3-part series with seemingly innocent True/False questions. He covers sorting, SQL tuning and …

To program is human, to instrument is divine. Complex systems that will support a heavy workload will eventually have to be tuned for it. There are two prerequisites for tuning: tunability, and measurability.

Tunability generally means configuration settings. Adding configuration settings is a sign of a humble and wise programmer. It means that the programmer acknowledges “I don’t understand how this system will be used, what environment it will run in, or even what my code really does.” Sometimes things are hard-coded. InnoDB is notorious for this, although don’t take that to mean that I think Heikki Tuuri isn’t humble and wise — nobody’s perfect. Sometimes programmers set out to create systems that are self-tuning. I’m not aware of any success stories I can point to in this regard, but I can point to plenty of failures. Perhaps I can’t think of any successes because I don’t need to.

Measurability …

Berkeley DB (BDB) is undoubtedly the workhorse among the opensource embedded database engines. It started as a university project in the mid-eighties and was further developed by Sleepycat Software, until it got acquired by Oracle in February 2006.

I had the impression that BDB had lost a lot of its popularity among opensource developers to SQLite in recent times, which has evolved into becoming the default choice for developers looking for an embedded data store. I'd assume primarily because the code is not released under any particular license, but put in the public domain …

Marten Mickos joins Eucalyptus. Novell rejects Elliot. Perspectives on OSBC. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Mårten Mickos was named CEO of Eucalyptus Systems.

# Novell’s board rejected Elliot’s takeover proposal as inadequate, will review other alternatives.

# North Bridge Venture Partners published the results of its Future of Open Source survey.

# Rob Bearden was appointed executive chairman of the board of Pentaho.

# The Eclipse Foundation …