Cloud computing is the big thing now days, weather you are an app developer using EC2 or the Google APP engine, or a new company trying to build your own cloud product. If you are hosting, or using a platform it costs money. I hate to spend money, especially money that is for my company. If I find an idle server, I use it to 100% utilization (prior to the saturation point).

I needed to build a new application that periodically crawls a website to update various lists. Building a crawler is expensive, especially from scratch. First, you have to define the amount of lag that is allowed from the crawl copy and the real copy. Of course the Project Manager does not want any lag, all events must be caught and near real-time without overloading the source of the data-but I am not hating, it is a challenge. Next, what technology to use, what language to write the app in-what considerations are left to be defined? How does one crawl Gigs, …

MySQL is participating in Google Summer of Code 2009 (GSoC for short), and so is the MySQL documentation team. We've just put our ideas on this page; you might want to have a look if you're interested in applying for a GSoc project.

One of the projects is purely technical and doesn't involve writing any documentation, but rather improving the technique that goes on behind the scenery.

The other project does involve writing documentation, but it's mostly (if not exclusively) about creating examples for the Connectors & APIs chapter of the MySQL Reference Manual, so you don't have to be a Pulitzer award winner to contribute, but you should rather …

Finally we got our proposal approved for the the MySQL conference and Victor and I will be speaking on April 22 about Testing the cluster with ANSTE.

The idea of storing data in a format that is specific to an application should be summarily rejected. It is a throw back to the earliest days of the computer industry when every application stored its data uniquely.

Once general purpose data processing applications came along in the form of database engines, and, in particular, SQL and many applications that could work on any data through SQL statements storing data in application unique formats was a no-no because doing so eliminated the value of all those applications.

However the MySQL structure that separates the database engine from the storage engine creates an opportunity to get the best of both worlds. The storage engine is responsible only for the physical storage and retrieval of the data, while the database engine provides most of the functions. Data that is stored using a custom storage engine works transparently as part of all the function that MySQL …

The idea of storing data in a format that is specific to an application should be summarily rejected. It is a throw back to the earliest days of the computer industry when every application stored its data uniquely.

Once general purpose data processing applications came along in the form of database engines, and, in particular, SQL and many applications that could work on any data through SQL statements storing data in application unique formats was a no-no because doing so eliminated the value of all those applications.

However the MySQL structure that separates the database engine from the storage engine creates an opportunity to get the best of both worlds. The storage engine is responsible only for the physical storage and retrieval of the data, while the database engine provides most of the functions. Data that is stored using a custom storage engine works transparently as part of all the function that MySQL …

As Colin revealed last week, Google has accepted MySQL for the Google Summer of Code 2009.

We’ve already participated in GSoC 2007 and 2008, so this is our third year running. We know more than before about what’s waiting for us, and so does our mentors and perhaps even some of our students. And in particular, Colin Charles has been our GSoC program coordinator all of these years, so he is quite seasoned by now.

The basic idea for MySQL to participate in Google Summer of Code is to provide students with an opportunity to …

I uploaded the slides from last's week's webcast on operational data integration and open source. They're embedded below for online viewing.

This is an overview of the difference between application integration and data integration, the differences in use and requirements for DI between business intelligence and OLTP, some integration architecture discussion, and why open source is an even better fit in the operational DI arena than it is for BI projects.

If you want to download a PDF of the slides or listen to a replay, you can find this talk under "How to Use the Right Tools for Operational Data Integration" on Talend's webcast page. There's no direct link to the presentation page so you have to click through.
How to Use the Right Tools for Operational Data Integration …