Local MySQL offices have hosted country-specific user or customer conferences in a number of countries this autumn:

• MySQL K.K. in Tokyo, Japan: MySQL Users Conference Japan 2007, 11-12.9.2007 at the Miraikan
• Linux Data Services in Seoul, Korea: MySQL Users Conference Korea 2007, 14.9.2007
• London, UK: MySQL Northern Europe Customer Conference, 16.10.2007 at the Cavendish Conference Centre
• Munich, Germany: …

Could Microsoft acquire an open source software vendor? Yes, is the answer, according to Steve Ballmer’s comments from the Web 2.0 Summit. However, I think there’s some reading between the lines to be done here. Microsoft could certainly buy an open source user, but at this stage an open source software vendor might be a step too far.

Here’s what Ballmer had to say, according to CNET:

“We will buy smaller companies. We will buy smaller companies that make some use of open source software,” he said. “We don’t want to discourage people who would talk with us just because they do some open source.”

It’s worth considering that Ballmer was speaking at a Web 2.0 event. As CRN points out, his comment is “a tacit acknowledgment of how thoroughly open-source …

This is quite a milestone for me! At last it possible to actually do some practical work with the BLOB streaming engine (MyBS)!

For this release I have completed changes to the MySQL Connector/J 5.0.7, to allow BLOB data to be transparently stored and retrieved from the MyBS BLOB repository. The new version of the driver is called MySQL Connector/J SE (streaming enabled).

Uploading a BLOB is as simple as using setBinaryStream() or setBlob() on INSERT or UPDATE. By using getBinaryStream() or getBlob() after a SELECT you get direct access to the data stream coming from the repository. More information and some examples are provided in the documentation at: http://www.blobstreaming.org/documentation.

To try this out you need to install the latest versions of PBXT and MyBS. Both are available from: …

So, once again, I was listening to the Pro::PHP Podcast (or is it Newscast?  guys?).  They were talking about putting files in to a database table.  Now, most people will say you should never do this.  And lots of time they are right.  And once upon a time I agreed with them without question.  Then I started living in the real world where sometimes you have to do things you never thought you would.  Here are the two places where I stores files in a database.

Phorum

Ever wrote software that has to be installed on n + infinity environments.  It really sucks.  Phorum version 3.3 or 3.4 was the first to allow attachments.  We put them on disk.  The instructions for setting up a spot on disk for attachments was longer than all the rest of the install document.  The support …

Continuing in the tradition, which I hope has been as helpful to you as it has been to me, I'm opening the floor for suggestions on chapter 9 of the upcoming High Performance MySQL, Second Edition. Unlike the other chapters for which I've listed outlines, this one isn't substantially written yet. It's in detailed outline form at this point (a tactic that has worked very well for us so far -- I'll write about that someday).

I'm trying to get feedback much earlier in this chapter's lifecycle, for several reasons. Two of the most important are that this is one of the first chapters I've had a chance to really take from scratch, and the chapters I haven't written from scratch have been harder to organize, as you've probably seen from the last few outlines I posted. There's a lot of value in working top-down on this deep encyclopedia-style material.

Read on for the outline and more thoughts I just can't keep to myself.

Note: This one comes in a bit late and it might not be as relevant as it could have been three weeks ago. But it also gives me the chance to take a more distanced look at the meeting. It might turn out that this post is more about working for MySQL than about the actual day.

It is about communication

I mentioned it a number of times, MySQL AB is a company with a very special structure. Its employees mostly work from home and home in this case is all over the world. By this time, most continents are covered as well as an impressive number of countries. It is obvious that solving communication issues is key to MySQL AB’s success. Different communication channels have all their merits and drawbacks and they are good at picking the right channel for the communication at hand.

MySQL is, of course, Open Source Software and MySQL AB has been an Open Company from the very beginning in terms of …

I see we‘ve put up a QuickPoll where you can vote on what language you use when implementing applications that use MySQL. I know there are a lot of you out there using Java with MySQL, so go ahead and vote at http://dev.mysql.com/

We’ve had the database appliance, the business intelligence appliance, the systems management appliance, and the CRM appliance, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the arrival of the open source enterprise resource planning appliance.

Openbravo has announced that it is teaming up with rPath to build an ERP software appliance for small and medium businesses, with the aim of simplifying deployment and ongoing maintenance.

The product includes a …

The Pune Linux Users Group had organized a Mash (http://plug.org.in/mashup/) on October 13th and 14th ‘07.

Yet again, Zmanda asserted its support to the open source community by being an active participant at the Mash. Zmanda was conspicuous, by participating in all the events at the Mash

We had put forth two project ideas for the Mash. One was to find the most popular video/news viewed in India at any given time. And the other was to develop a Mobile-Mobile Chat Application.

The attendees were interested in both the project ideas.

Day 1 ? October 13th

At the Coding Session, Nikhil Bandiwadekar and Sachin Kale made significant progress in finding the most popular finance news viewed at any time. They used Yahoo Pipes for this purpose.

One of the attendees suggested the use of OpenMoko ( …

Tonight's reading material?

O'Reilly's "High Performance Web Sites Essential Knowledge for Frontend Engineers".

So what did I think?

I liked it.

First the background for the book. It is not yet another book on Apache, MySQL, or any particular scripting language. It is a front end designer's book.

A front end designer's book that does not explain HTML 101 (again). Instead the book went into how the delivery of content to a user's browser shapes the user's experience.

What I liked about the book was that the material was original. All of the information, except one bit about keeping JS scripts to …