The InnoDB plugin is now merged into the Drizzle mainline. There is still one weird outstanding bug that I know of. Why is this exciting? The main things found in the plugin that I'm excited about are:

• New compressed table format.
• Adding or dropping indexes can now bypass the table copy
• Information Schema plugins with InnoDB internals data

Not to mention, something tells me that the plugin will be getting more dev attention, and should be easier to track moving forward.
I've been doing my best to make the changes in such a way that they could be potentially merged back into the plugin upstream, should Oracle care to. (which I hope they will)

The InnoDB plugin is now merged into the Drizzle mainline. There is still one weird outstanding bug that I know of. Why is this exciting? The main things found in the plugin that I'm excited about are:

• New compressed table format.
• Adding or dropping indexes can now bypass the table copy
• Information Schema plugins with InnoDB internals data

Not to mention, something tells me that the plugin will be getting more dev attention, and should be easier to track moving forward.
I've been doing my best to make the changes in such a way that they could be potentially merged back into the plugin upstream, should Oracle care to. (which I hope they will)

It just goes to show that code isn’t the only way to contribute. Mike Shadle recently did some leg work the Drizzle world by not only fronting the domain cost for drizzle.org, but also in actually negotiating down the guy who owned it already. That being done, the time has come (if you’re so inclined) to chip in and help defray Mike’s out-of-pocket.

The goal is to raise roughly $1000 USD to cover the domain + Escrow costs. I’ve already said I would contribute a chunk of that. Please include in the PayPal description your full name/company/whatever identifying information you’d like and if you’d like it recorded, and I will record it and if the Drizzle guys wish, we can post your info on the [not established yet] website as a Drizzle supporter.

If you’ve got an extra few buck lying around, please feel free to …

I had so much to say in response to a recent post asking about virtualization from Jennifer Glore that I realized it was long enough to be a blog post.

It really depends on what you’re looking to do. Many companies don’t have the money and staff to have an in-house data center with proper power and network redundancy; others don’t want the depreciation associated with owning computer hardware (even if they leased space in a data center, they’d have to buy equipment to put in it).

Some reasons to virtualize:
1) you need a fresh machine and cannot wait to order a new one or re-purpose an older one.
2) your need for machines/services fluctuates (and again, re-purposing takes time). This need can be as broad as employee desktops or as …

OpenSQL Camp is a free unconference happening Friday, Nov. 14th through Sunday, Nov. 16th in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. More details can be found at http://www.opensqlcamp.org.

Whether or not you have already registered for OpenSQL Camp by putting your name here:

http://www.opensqlcamp.org/index.php?title=Events/2008/AttendeeList

you should be aware of very important information.
(more…)

There is a natural fit between university students and researchers and the open source community. They are smart, educated, short of cash, and want to make the world a better place; and some of them, at least, have plenty of spare time.

More seriously, open source projects are a great platform for software research. By starting with a mature software platform, the researchers can spend less time recreating existing functionality, and get to the new, interesting stuff faster. The findings of such projects are more applicable to the real world because the new ideas have been tested in realistic architectures and on data sets of a reasonable size. In the area of spatial (GIS) applications alone, there are several projects, including the work of …

There are many virtualization options available to MySQL users.  One of these is the baremetal hypervisor, which is installed directly on the hardware and eliminates the need for a primary operating system.  Baremetal hypervisors are extremely flexible in that multiple operating systems can be supported on one system while increasing overall server utilization since multiple environments can run on one system.  Additionally, most enterprises see more flexibility over their environment and resources, higher levels of availability and security, increased efficiency, ease of migration, improved manageability, and a total lower cost of ownership.   Sun xVM Server falls under the baremetal hypervisor category.  My colleagues in Israel, Adina and Orgad, are helping us determine the best practices for running MySQL within xVM Server. 

For those of you who don't know much about Sun xVM Server, it is a …

Have you looked at virtualization for your MySQL environments yet?  If so, I'd like to hear about it-- what technology are you using, what benefits have you seen due to virtualization, and have you encountered any downsides or limitations?  For those who haven't explored virtualization, why not?  Once again, I'd like to here about?

Continued from Part 1

Q: But, we digress... so let me instead ask you the question everyone asks me when they hear about Apache and MySQL on a mobile phone: Why on earth would anyone want to do THAT?

Because we can:)

No seriously, there are good reasons. If we assume that it makes sense to run a web server on your mobile (see further down for reasons for that) and the web-server you use is Apache, then it's quite obvious that you also want to provide both PHP and MySQL. After all, some 40% of all web-sites in the world are powered by (L)AMP, so if you provide the same environment on the mobile, you have hundreds of thousands of developers who are familiar with the stack.

But, in my mind, there are also compelling reasons to have a proper database on the mobile. Currently, the way …

If that was too cryptic, here's the news: we've extended the deadline on the Call for Papers for the upcoming MySQL User Conference which will be held April 20-23 in Santa Clara CA.  You've got until Nov 5 to get your proposals in. 

If you want to increase your odds of being accepted, here are some tips:

• Make it technical, but accessible
• Include both theory and practice (e.g. here's what we did and why)
• Clearly identify who your talk is for (e.g. developers, DBAs, …