Recently Todd  blogged about why you should register for MySQL 5.6 certification exams now: http://mysqlblog.fivefarmers.com/2013/10/04/why-you-should-register-for-mysql-5-6-certification-exams-now/ and i also think that now is a good opportunity to renew or take a new mysql certification.

The most interesting point in my opinion is that you can save a lot of money if you take the exam NOW! The exam price is 50 dollar (39 Euro) till 14.12.2013.

So, if you want to update your, probably years old, mysql certification now is the time!  You can search for a test center and register for the exam here:

http://pearsonvue.com/oracle/

Be aware that you won’t get your results directly but after a few weeks. Also there are about 150-220 questions! Phew! All information about the exam can be found here:

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This is to announce that me and Daniel Nichter (Lead of Percona Toolkit) are coming to the MYSQL NOSQL & CLOUD CONFERENCE & EXPO in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Oct. 15-16.
There also will be local Percona experts in attendance.

Talks from Percona include:

• Percona XtraDB Cluster – Basic installation and setup by Martín Arrieta
• Proactive measures to minimize MySQL downtime by Fernando Ipar
• Percona Server 5.6 : New features and performance improvements by Vadim Tkachenko
• Systematic Approach to Performance by Marcos Albe

We also will present at The Montevideo MySQL Meetup group in Uruguay on Oct. 17.

So if you want to talk with Percona experts, chat with me and Daniel on Percona Software, or …

Last week, we at SkySQL had a webinar titled MariaDB Query Optimizer - Improving Query Performance with yours truly as the author and presenter. The recording is now available online at the above link.

The webinar is an overview of all important parts of the MySQL/MariaDB query optimizer. Special attention is given to the new optimizer features and differences between MySQL and MariaDB.

Would you like to learn about the latest MySQL news and innovations from MySQL Connect/Oracle OpenWorld but couldn't travel there? Are you about to develop a new modern web-based application, wondering what the best database solution is for you? Would you like to learn how to use NoSQL access to MySQL and the new MySQL Database and MySQL Cluster features to build next generation applications?

Join one of our upcoming "Performance, Scalability and High Availability with MySQL" Tech Tours! You will hear directly from the source about new MySQL innovations from Oracle, including how the latest MySQL 5.7 DMR yet again doubles the performance of MySQL, and how the new MySQL Fabric provides you with a framework for both High-Availability and sharding of MySQL Databases. Our technical experts will show you how to take advantage of the new features and enhancements in the best MySQL product releases ever, and share …

Do you want to get more familiar on how to become a MySQL DBA?

Are you a developer familiar with writing applications that use MySQL but you feel a bit limited on how to  manage a MySQL Database?

I would like to invite you in my tutorial ‘MySQL DBA In A Nutshell! Hands On! ‘ at Percona Live UK, London on 11 November!

The full day tutorial, co-presented by my colleague Dimitri Vanoverbeke and …

For decades MySQL has considered BLOB a sink for data junk that didn’t fit the strictly typed SQL bill. As the outside world began voting for JavaScript, JSON and key-value/key-document stores, TEXT/BLOB was rediscovered as the only way to store JSON inside MySQL. But having no SQL support for the JSON serialization format, JSON remained junk for MySQL. Community developed SQL functions could not cure the issue. That said, MySQL 5.7 introduces SQL functions to work on JSON documents! MySQL slowly takes a different position on JSON.

From the labyrinth: labs.mysql.com

In the recent past, MySQL has developed a talent hiding feature previews at http://labs.mysql.com/. This is where you find …

Going to MySQL Connect was truly a blast. We got a lot of good questions and feedback in the sessions and there were a lot of interest in both MySQL Fabric and the MySQL Applier for Hadoop.

A big thank you to all that attended the talks, I got a lot of good questions and comments that will help us build good solutions.

The talks are available on SlideShare:

• MySQL Sharding: Tools and Best Practices for Horizontal Scaling 
• MySQL Applier for Apache Hadoop: Real-Time Event Streaming to HDFS
• Sharding PHP with MySQL …

Just a quick post to note that the content from my hands-on lab at MySQL Connect (“MySQL Enterprise Features in Practice”) has been uploaded to the content catalog, and can be found here.  This includes the 36-page lab manual and example commands and programs (mostly in Java; the package includes both compiled and source code).  For those who attended the lab, this is an opportunity to complete the exercises we didn’t get to in the 2.5 hours, and for those who missed it, an opportunity to learn more about the features and capabilities of key MySQL Enterprise products and features such as MySQL Enterprise Audit plugin, MySQL Enterprise Monitor and MySQL Enterprise Security (PAM plugin).  I hope to expand on the lab content …

Yesterday we announced the GA release of Percona Server 5.6, the latest release of our enhanced, drop-in replacement for MySQL. Percona Server 5.6 is the best free MySQL alternative for demanding applications. Our third major release, Percona Server 5.6 offers all the improvements found in MySQL 5.6 Community Edition plus scalability, availability, backup, and security features some of which are found only in MySQL 5.6 Enterprise Edition.

Percona Server 5.6 comes with:

• General performance improvements
• Extensive diagnostics via TABLE/INDEX/USER …

The next Bristol (and surrounding areas) MySQL meetup will take place on Thursday 10th of October in Bristol (currently) scheduled for 7.00pm at the Watershed. I say currently because it might be moved if we can find a quieter place. I personally found the Watershed pretty noisy. The topic of the night will be tools. We'll have a 50,000ft overview of some of the tools and then make some time for some demos. According to the RSVP list there's a nice mix of Dev and Ops so there should be a mixture of experience and hopefully some inspirational use cases for tools being used in the wild. Right this moment the agenda of tools will be some from the following;

• pt-toolkit
• openark-toolkit
• Oracle's MySQL Utilities
• Xtrabackup
• Mydumper
• Common_schema
• AOT

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