In having a discussion with Paul McCullagh (the creator of PBXT transactional storage engine) and Taneli Otala MySQL AB CTO after the keynote presentation at the MySQL User Conference, Taneli made the following comment (paraphrased and reproduced with permission).

“I talk about PBXT in discussions shamelessly. The development of PBXT was excellent timing in the MySQL community landscape”.

It was an excellent commendation that MySQL AB management considered so highly the contributions from the community. As mentioned in the opening keynote, MySQL with the Storage Engine API with MySQL 5.1 has great potential to expand what options are available to user of MySQL.

Good work Paul. I like many others wish you the best in your continued development and contribution. …

It just dawned on me as this topic was mentioned in a MySQL Conference presentation yesterday in a manual process. So my thought is, why can’t the following functionality be added to the MySQL server.

My request for two new extensions to the SHOW STATUS command.

SAVE STATUS - This enables the current SHOW STATUS to be saved (or more specifically cached), you can only keep one copy per server instance.

DIFF STATUS - This shows the difference between the current SHOW STATUS and the last saved show status from the SAVE STATUS command.

This would quickly, easily and interactively via a mysql prompt enable a DBA to see the state of change in a more condensed form. The syntax may need to cater for Session/Global scope, and of course would need to be appropiately named, my examples is just an idea.

Of course you can write an easy script that does the same, …

I’ve just attended Scott Ambler’s presentation on Agile Database Techniques: Data Doesn?t Have to be a Four-Letter Word Anymore at the MySQL Users Conference.

There is so much content on the topic, it’s impossible to present so much information in a short 45 minute session. I can speak with authority in regards to the same problem of condensing so much content given this issue with my own presentation MySQL for Oracle Developers.

I ask this question. Why is common sense considered such a radical approach? I state this because Agile Methodology approaches in so many ways are common sense, but …

Mike writes a good summary of the MySQL Conference opening keynote State of the Dolphin: Interview with Kaj, Monty and David of MySQL.

I’d like to add just two comments.

Firstly, it was great to see community awards to Giuseppe, Roland, Marcus and Rasmus. Well done!

Second, it was a great thing to see on the slides a reference to Paul’s PBXT Transactional Storage Engine. A MySQL storage engine from the community. I’ve had a chance to meet Paul and have a number of great discussions with him. I wish him all the best, and I’m happy to contribute what I can to see his engine make it into the MySQL product in the future.

Tuesday’s Keynote speaking from the MySQL Users Conference including a presentation from Greg Gianforte of RightNow Technologies on “Bootstrapping: Starting an Open Source Business With Almost No Money!” Read More.

Taking directly from Greg’s presentation, here are some key points for bootstraping that meant something to me.

• Sales is Job #1
• Don’t spend Beyond Your Means
• There Is Always Another Way
• What is Your Noble Purpose?

Some great points. In summary, not having funds should not be an excuse, find another way . You just need to think creatively. I agree completely, thinking creatively is something I do well. Immerse yourself - talk to lots of people, …

Last night, I attended Mike Zinner’s presentation of MySQL GUI’s, most specifically MySQL Workbench. In summary I was very impressed with the current work, and the future potential. I’ve been waiting for now about a year to get access to full strength MySQL Workbench (it has been available for some time, but still in early development), having previously used DB Designer for MySQL Data Modelling. One of the limitations is finding a quality tool that runs under Linux. Well MySQL workbench will satisfy this and far more in the future.

A quick summary of some of the glossy features.

• Reverse Engineering of schemas from multiple input sources including MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL Server.
• Synchronisation with a MySQL Database.
• Quick Re-Synchronisation.
• Full GUI tools and features for creating and maintaining database …

While many people will be blogging about the conference sessions and MySQL features, functionality and sessions, I thought it would be important to raise awareness of the creativity of developers often lost during the product lifecycle.

I met at the Speakers Function last night Jim Starkey, the founder of Netfrastructure, Inc, a company aquired by MySQL recently. At the conference was the official launch of a new transactional storage engine to be included in the MySQL 5.1 release is codenamed “Falcon”.

Too often, the flare and creativity of products, and also the initial history is lost when it reaches the marketing department of an organisation. In this case, after talking with Jim, we decided it was important to ensure the name “Falcon” remains. Why should the name conform to something generic, and quick frankly boring. So please join me.

Save The Falcon!

Everybody has been writing lately of their likes of sessions and events for the MySQL User Conference, time for my 2 cents worth, with a twist.

I’ll be leaving early tomorrow at 7am (Friday my time), that’s Thursday 2pm Conference time. A taxi, two trains, two planes, and some 21 hours later, I’ll be at San Jose. In time to get a car and head to Davis California, a small town, where I have lived previously. After some catchup, I’m off to Lake Tahoe, (all up about 3 hrs from San Jose), for some R & R, and a weekend of Skiing, starting at Heavenly. No snow in the last few days, but 4 feet in the past week, and a bumper season to date. (The added benefit is it’s much cooler, I’m not a warm weather person, and my current home in Brisbane Australia is just too warm for my liking)

A lazy Sunday afternoon drive back, …

Peter Gulutzan, who I had the pleasure of meeting (and eating) with a number of times at the developer’s conference in Sorrento, has written a very good overview of the new MySQL Events features plugged into MySQL 5.1.

Events differ from triggers because you can set an event to happen at a specified time or a specific interval. Although sometimes referred to as CRON for MySQL, events are slightly more flexible, and database driven making them much more practical than running a script or other tool through the cron, at or similar tool.

I just updated my SQL reserved words checker to include a few new words from MySQL 5 that it wasn't picking up.

I use the tool when I'm designing a database table, or column. It can tell you if a value is a reserved word in MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, or SQL Server.