So, I actually started my trip early, the taxi picked me up from my house in Malta at 5:15am, and after a short stop in the lounge for some breakfast, I boarded KM100 bound for Heathrow. After a layover there, I eventually arrived at Dulles International, and there was no queue for US customs and border patrol!

Picked up the rental car and drove the 101 miles to Charlottesville, VA — in dense fog.

Met with Sheeri and talked for a bit on Thursday, before just falling asleep, due to time difference and the long travel.

So on Friday, we had a few hours to run errands and pick up last minute stuff that we had forgot back home and so on, before the start at 6pm. Met up with everyone, had some nice interesting conversations and towards the end of the night, 14 of us decided that it was time for dinner, so we went over to a local restaurant. Lots of …

Sun announced a significant layoff and restructuring yesterday, shedding between 5K and 6K staff, out of 30K. 20% is significant.

Lots of people, including friends and family, have asked what effect it has had on me.

Not much. What I have been doing at Sun is unaffected, and what I plan on doing at Sun is unaffected. The database groups (e.g. MySQL) aren't getting reduced beyond normal post-aquisition attrition, and in fact, the database groups are still hiring. Not hiring as easily, since instead of our older system where a PM decides he needs someone, gets permission, looks at some candidates, and then just hires someone anywhere in the world and puts them to work, here at Sun we have to work thru a byzantine and slow "hiring process" that much more painful and not nearly as smoothly international. But, we are still hiring.

If you want to be a developer on MySQL, or provide support, or do remote DBA …

I'm at OpenSQLCamp this weekend.

Just like every traveller eventually has to do ORD at a dead run (BTDT), every traveller has to deal with DC commuter exodus traffic. And that's what I did last night. I got out of the gig at the Intelset Building Complex in DC at 5, and started the drive to Charlottesville VA. Google Maps said it would take 1.5 hours. The Nuvi in my rental car started out saying 2 hours. But it kept adding more time, and in the end, it took 3, plus 20 minutes of trying to find a place to park. The traffic avoidance in the Nuvi kept me off the freeway, and put me on the Lee Highway, so that was nearly 80 miles of hitting a stoplight every few miles.

Let's say I really needed the glasses of wine I enjoyed when I arrived.


The who's who crew of MySQL is here. Sheeri met me at the door. After …

The OpenSQLCamp started yesterday in Charlottesville, VA.
As expected, the gathering is impressive. There are many well known names from the open source database world. MySQL is probably overrepresented, but that's fair, considering its wide adoption.

Yesterday was an informal "meet anyone and let's see what we do tomorrow". The schedule, as you can see, is very dynamic.

One of the new features in the new release of MySQL Enterprise Monitor is Query Analyzer. As the name suggests, the Query Analyzer provides information about the queries that are running on your server, the response times and row and byte statistics. The information provided is great, and it doesn’t take very long to see from the query data supplied that there are places where you could improve the the query, or even reduce the number of queries that you submit.

The system works by using the functionality of the MySQL Proxy to monitor the queries being executed and then provide that information up to the MySQL Enterprise Service Manager so that the information can be displayed within the Query Analyzer page. To get the queries monitored, you have to send the queries through the agent which both monitors their execution and sends the information on up to the Manager, along with all the other data being monitored.

The team, …

Antonio Carlos González Cabrera, of the University of Spain has kindly sent me the Spanish translation of the slides I used for a session on MySQL couple of days back. Antonio is going to use the slides in his database class.



Thanks Antonio!

Here is the slide deck: http://amitsaha.in.googlepages.com/MySQL-Intro-features-benefits-SPANIS.ppt

Antonio Carlos González Cabrera, of the University of Spain has kindly sent me the Spanish translation of the slides I used for a session on MySQL couple of days back. Antonio is going to use the slides in his database class.



Thanks Antonio!

Here is the slide deck: http://amitsaha.in.googlepages.com/MySQL-Intro-features-benefits-SPANIS.ppt

Sun's Customer Engineer Conference is now history and over forty new Certified MySQL Associates are on the street. Track 15 aka MySQL was a new session for Sun and CEC was new for George and yours truely.

George Trujillo did a wonderful job, as he always does, in getting a large room full of people with various skills up to speed with MySQL. Three sessions a day most for three days after a long Monday were tough but the folks in Track 15 hung in there. A few had Oracle or other database experience but most were new to the subject. By Thursday night they were replicating databases. Zero to replication in eight sessions. That is very impressive.

This morning was my turn and the candidates listened intently to my brief review and then tore into the test. As they finished, I made a point …

Andrei Badea, one of our team members, does an excellent screencast showing off some of the new database features in NetBeans 6.5 (due to release next week). Things like code completion, editable results, multiple result tabs, SQL history and easy creation of the Sakila sample database.