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 …

Here's a quick function you may find useful, it calculates a timespan in hours and quarter hours (4.25, 5.5, 6.75, etc):

DELIMITER $$
        
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `upto`.`hours_and_quarter_hours`$$
CREATE FUNCTION `upto`.`hours_and_quarter_hours`(p_start_time DATETIME, p_end_time DATETIME) RETURNS decimal(5,2)
BEGIN
        
    DECLARE quarter_hours INTEGER;
        
    SET quarter_hours = CEILING((UNIX_TIMESTAMP(p_end_time) - UNIX_TIMESTAMP(p_start_time)) / 900);
        
    RETURN FLOOR(quarter_hours / 4) + (MOD(quarter_hours,4) * .25);
        
END$$
        
DELIMITER ;

In order to better document MySQL on Mac, I have recently acquired a Mac Mini. This brings my collection of desktop machines to three:

The black machine is a Windows box, the white machine runs Linux, and now a Mac Mini.

The new addition closer up:

This is the first Mac I have had regular use of, so I am sure I have some learning to do. For now I just need to get MySQL and the GUI tools installed, then find where they hide the command-line.

I went to the annual local airshow today, got to see some nice planes, got a great sunburn, and got another reminder that I am slowly losing my second language. From 1996 to 1998 I lived in southern Japan and became a pretty good speaker of Japanese. Not pretty good in the sense that a guy who watches too much Anime considers himself pretty good at Japanese, but pretty good in the sense that I spoke Japanese every day, did spoken translations at meetings, and on more than one occasion would get a good ways into a telephone conversation before the person on the other end of the phone would realize I was not my Japanese roommate. I was almost illiterate when it came to the written word, but at spoken language I was pretty darn good, all I needed was more and more words in my vocabulary (Japanese grammar is a breeze once you know the rules, and there are no exceptions to the rules).

So, I was standing in line to take a look through one …