Yes, that’s right — you can get MySQL certified for no cost at all.

“How does this work?” I hear you ask.

Step 1: Attend the MySQL Conference & Expo (If you haven’t already signed up, that particular part isn’t quite “free” of course. But that just begs the question “Why haven’t you done that yet? It’s only a few days away!)

Step 2: Locate Carsten, Roland or one of the other people from the MySQL certification team there. On Tuesday, we will be outside the Magnolia room (where the exams take place) during testing hours. You can also catch people on Monday, when they are giving primer tutorials on the Cluster, …

There has been some late updates to our Keynote sessions for the Users Conference. The keynotes presentations are given Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the morning for the entire conference audience, in the combined Ballrooms E-H. I think we have quite an exciting group of visionaries, technologists and influentials:

Tuesday morning keynotes 24 April 2007

• 8:20-9:05: Welcome and State of MySQL AB, Mårten Mickos, MySQL AB, CEO gives an update on how MySQL AB is doing, including a view behind the scenes of the business, the vision, …

Hot on the heels of our release of the Cluster certification comes our brand-new CMA: Certified MySQL Associate certification.

The development of the MySQL certification program has so far mainly been focused on creating very technical and specialized certifications for those with a lot of experience is using MySQL. The recent release of the Cluster certification is an example of just that: Not only is the certification very specialized, you are also expected to hold the CMDBA certification before you even start taking on the Cluster certification.

In the meantime, we have received many requests from customers, candidates and also internally to develop a more basic certification, a certification to validate that the candidate has a good foundation in basic MySQL skills …

The new 5.1.17 Beta of the MySQL Server has just hit the streets so make sure you visit the 5.1 download page and get your updated copy. Version 5.1.17 has some interesting additions, including a new DEFINER clause that many of you asked for in the 5.1 event/job scheduler, and prepared statements are now supported in the MySQL query cache, although make sure you read the 5.1 reference manual to understand the various conditions under which they work.

If you haven’t done so already, download the 5.1 technical whitepaper, which shows how to use all the great new functionality in MySQL 5.1. Also shoot …

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So, I wanted to get some feedback before I presented my sessions at the upcoming MySQL Conference (be there, it’ll be cool). I thought… hrrm.. distributed company… I can’t just ask a couple of people to listen to me in the conference room as we don’t really have one (apart from IRC).

So… I thought.. hrrm… didn’t i see something about screencasting on the program for linux.con f.au ? Well, the answer was yes - Screencasting HOWTO. Started watching - I then proceeded to try the list of screencasting software.

Istanbul didn’t work - I got images and audio, but only when there was a change to what was being displayed… so a static slide with me talking, didn’t …

MySQL Table Sync 0.9.2 is a bug-fix release. Since the last release users have reported several bugs. I am still postponing new features until after the MySQL Conference and Expo, because I am focusing on the innotop session I'll be presenting at the conference.

I have also created a new mailing list on sourceforge for discussing all things MySQL Toolkit.

Continuent bundles MySQL Enterprise with its high-availability offering. BakBone announces enterprise data protection for RHEL 5. OASIS approves WS-BPEL standard. (and more)

Continuent Extends High-Availability Offering, Bundles MySQL Enterprise, Continuent (Press Release)

BakBone Announces Enterprise Data Protection Solutions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, BakBone Software (Press Release)

Members Approve Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) as OASIS Standard, OASIS (Press Release)

…

I spent some time with Chris Marino, CEO and Co-founder of SnapLogic, a sparkling new (pre-VC funding, I believe) entrant to the open source business ecosystem. The company is positioning itself between the EAI and ETL markets, and has an approach that could prove to be quite successful. As I've argued before, the Application Integration space is ripe for open source.

Here's the problem, schematically, that SnapLogic is trying to resolve:

And here's the problem, in prose:

First off, some context is needed. I asked Chris who his competitors are, and he noted a few of the big-name EAI vendors, including Tibco, Informatica, WebMethods, Vitria, IBM, etc. But the competition tends to have …

Wow. 160 people in del.icio.us have bookmarked my project.