I managed to get my hands on a fairly cool device, the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.  The picture above doesn't do it justice, but it's a small Internet tablet with built-in WiFi and a beautful crisp screen running 800x480 resolution. It weights just 8 ounces (230 grams) and can be easily carried in a jacket pocket.  Since the device is from Nokia, you might guess that it has basic phone capabilities or GPRS based web surfing, but it doesn't.  However, if you have a bluetooth enabled phone, you can surf via your phone. 

After a couple of days experimenting, I don't think this will replace my existing Palm Treo phone or Sony Vaio laptop, but I'm still impressed with it.  It offers the …

Whenever we poll our users, the topic of performance tuning and optimization always scores the highest interest level. So at the MySQL Users Conference, we have a full track devoted to performance tuning.  (Hey, we're not dummies. Everyone wants a little extra performance!) This includes best practices presentations by some of the elite performance gurus from inside MySQL and among our top users and partners.  This includes talks by people like performance engineer Peter Zaitsev (pictured above), community guy Jay Pipes, Optimization wizard Timour …

It’s been reported a million times elsewhere, but Oracle has acquired Sleepycat, maker of the BerkeleyDB database. This will probably affect various users of BDB itself, but not MySQL users. If Oracle bought Sleepycat to mess with MySQL, they’re smoking something really good. I don’t think they’re that stupid.

I was quoted by Computer World magazine, in their article Users unworried by Oracle?s purchase of Sleepycat as follows:

Despite its popularity …

Although I've had a few ideas brewing for some time, things finally came together tonight for my O'Reilly Open Source Convention talk proposals. I just finished putting the last of three in:

• 
  
• Creating Art with MySQL Routines (45-minute talk): a look at 10 new procedures/functions designed to be fun, not functional (looking to the Perl ACME modules).
  
• The 30-minute MySQL Cluster Installation (45-minute talk): complete step-by-step setup of a MySQL cluster (highlighting history, hardware, anatomy of the cluster, configuration, and management).
  
• Hands on MySQL 5: Procedures, Functions, Triggers and Views (3-hour tutorial): hands-on building of examples of each new enterprise feature in MySQL 5 (co-presented with Jay)
  

I was going to submit the …

Anders Hejlsberg, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, is interviewed in the Microsoft Channel 9 "Behind the Code" series.  Anders is one of the greatest minds in the programming field and has had a huge influence on programmers for more than 20 years.  Anders developed the first Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Turbo Pascal at Borland, and later developed Delphi, Visual Java, the Windows Foundation Classes, C# and the .Net framework. 

I had the pleasure of working with Anders on various versions of Turbo Pascal and Delphi back at Borland some years back.  One of the best things about Anders was he understood how to meet the needs of a very large audience of customers by applying principals of simplicity and elegance.  He was careful not to add features …

Wouldn't you know it just a few weeks after I bought my father a Mac for Christmas, Steve Jobs beats his previous target dates by announcing and shipping Intel-based Macs at MacExpo last week. I don't think my father is enough of a power user to notice the difference, but for most Mac heads, the new Intel-based Macs are nothing but good news. 

Not only do a lot of the MySQL developers and the open source community in general use and love the Mac, it seems to be an increasingly popular platform among our customers.  In our most recent user survey over the holidays, Mac OS/X users accounted for about 12% of respondents. This is an increase over the last year, and …

Wouldn't you know it just a few weeks after I bought my father a Mac for Christmas, Steve Jobs beats his previous target dates by announcing and shipping Intel-based Macs at MacExpo last week. I don't think my father is enough of a power user to notice the difference, but for most Mac heads, the new Intel-based Macs are nothing but good news. 

Not only do a lot of the MySQL developers and the open source community in general use and love the Mac, it seems to be an increasingly popular platform among our customers.  In our most recent user survey over the holidays, Mac OS/X users accounted for about 12% of respondents. This is an increase over the last year, and …

NASA's Mars Rover project has continued in its successful use of open source software. The ground systems controlling the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers are heavily based on open source technology including MySQL, the Castor data binding framework and Xerces XML parser.  According to Jeff Norris, a senior computer scientist at the Jet Propusion Laboratory, the rovers success is a testament to open source, laying the groundwork for greater use of open source inside the agency.  "It's emboldened, or increased our approach to use open source," he said.

MySQL is also now available under a US Federal GSA contract which should make it easier for government agencies to purchase MySQL Network.

• NewsForge: NASA's Mars Rover blazes open source path
• eWeek: …

NASA's Mars Rover project has continued in its successful use of open source software. The ground systems controlling the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers are heavily based on open source technology including MySQL, the Castor data binding framework and Xerces XML parser.  According to Jeff Norris, a senior computer scientist at the Jet Propusion Laboratory, the rovers success is a testament to open source, laying the groundwork for greater use of open source inside the agency.  "It's emboldened, or increased our approach to use open source," he said.

MySQL is also now available under a US Federal GSA contract which should make it easier for government agencies to purchase MySQL Network.

• NewsForge: NASA's Mars Rover blazes open source path
• eWeek: …

MySQL has announced a new user survey over the holidays.  The survey will take about 15-20 minutes to complete and has questions about how you're using MySQL, what features are important to you and what areas you'd like MySQL to work on.  This is a great way to influence our strategy and directions.  It helps our product managers and engineers focus on the features that are important to you.  And you may even win an iPod Nano in the process! 

• MySQL: User Survey