I was browsing through the session grid for the MySQL User Conference when I cam across a session titled My Second Life Runs on MySQL: War Stories from the Metaverse:

Second Life is a 3D online world where the users call the shots; from creating simple objects to writing complex distributed programs, they build and do pretty much whatever they feel like. And what they feel like doing is often something we never predicted.

This talk will cover the evolution of Second Life’s database architecture over the past three years, as they’ve gone from a handful of users to tens of thousands. Wilkes will discuss the biggest hurdles they’ve overcome along the way, and give an overview of where they plan to go over the next few years.

Second Life is an interesting system and reminds me a lot …

If you can’t get a discount to the registration fees for the MySQL UC, you are either waiting too long or not trying hard enough.

First off, there’s the $200 early registration discount that ends March 6, then there are the various other discounts:

Well, it's official. I've been accepted for at least two sessions at the 2006 MySQL User Conference.

Get ready to register and you could be watching:

Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL
The Sakila Sample Database

Which of course means I need to get the Sakila sample DB released *soon* so that I can tweak it before the conference gets too close.

I'm looking forward to this year's conference, every year is bigger and better than the last.

Thanks to all those who have provided feedback on my session ideas so far.

I have another session proposal that I would appreciate feedback on at:

http://www.openwin.org/mike/index.php/presentations/the-sakila-sample-database-proposal/

This one discusses the new MySQL Sakila sample database, how to use it, and how it was implemented.

I have another MySQL UC2006 session proposal I am working on at http://www.openwin.org/mike/index.php/presentations/securing-a-mysql-server-in-12-easy-steps-proposal/

Any input would be appreciated.

I'm working on some session proposals for the 2006 MySQL User Conference, and I have the first one pretty fleshed out. If you have a minute please click the following link and provide some feedback for the proposal: is it a session you would attend? Is there any information you think is missing, topics you would like to see?

Thanks

http://www.openwin.org/mike/index.php/presentations/documentation-at-mysql-ab/

Well, we are getting very close indeed to a production release of MySQL 5. Today MySQL is releasing MySQL 5.0.13, a Release Candidate (formerly known as Gamma) version.

You can read all about it at http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/news/article_959.html, but here's the feature highlights:

The new ANSI SQL features include:

• Views (both read-only and updatable views)
• Stored Procedures and Stored Functions, using the SQL:2003 syntax, which is also used by IBM's DB2
• Triggers (row-level)
• Server-side cursors (read-only, non-scrolling)

Implementing ANSI SQL standard ways of using existing MySQL features means there will be fewer unpleasant surprises ("gotchas") for those …

Well, it looks like preparation for the 2006 MySQL User's Conference and Expo is underway, with the http://www.mysqluc.com/ site updated to reflect the 2006 conference.

What we can discern so far is that the theme is this:

Discover. Connect. Succeed. Scale Your Business with MySQL

The dates will be April 24-27, 2006, and the conference is going back to last year's location is Santa Clara, California.

The Call for Participation is open till November 7, and I am starting to brainstorm some sessions. This will be my fourth MySQL User's conference, and I want to try some new content. In 2003 I spoke on VB development with MySQL, in 2004 I spoke on Migrating Access and SQL Server data to MySQL, and in 2005 I spoke on Migrating Access and SQL Server data again. In other conferences I have done talks on normalization and managing hierarchical …