Every year the user conference gets better and better. I’m not sure if it’s the actual conference or just that I know so many more people than I did the year before so I’m that much more excited to see them all again. I was a speaker this year which is something like being a C celebrity. The attendees at the conference were split into a few very distinct groups. High order geeks, geeks with questions, and business people. The sessions seemed to be setup to appeal to one of these three groups. Of the sessions I attended my favorites were the row based replication session (which inspired Row based replication and application developers) and Timour Katchaounov’s session on new features of the 5.0 optimizer.

It was interesting walking around the conference meeting different people from various backgrounds and …

PHP 5.1.3 was just released, including the latest PDO and PDO drivers. If you're still running older releases of PHP you should probably upgrade. If you don't want to upgrade the PHP core then you'll be pleased to know that I've also released the PHP 5.1.3 versions of PDO, PDO::MYSQL, PDO::PGSQL, PDO::SQLITE and PDO::ODBC to PECL--these are the versions that I've had time to personally test.

These are identical to the code in PHP 5.1.3, with the exception of PDO::ODBC, which includes two additional bug fixes that didn't make it in time.

Enjoy!

On a related note, I noticed that people were downloading PHP 5.1.2 and then trying to build older PDO drivers from PECL into it, and then filing bugs when it didn't work. Don't do that; it really doesn't make sense. As a general rule, PHP 5.1 and higher bundle PDO, so if the version of PHP you are using is newer than the latest PECL package, stick with the version of PDO that …

The subject says it all, if you are heading to the mysql meetup, go to the pizza place up the street.

ROME, Italy -- MySQL AB today announced that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has selected MySQL as its open source server-side database standard. The agency -- one of the UN's largest -- plans to migrate up to 80% of its technical information systems to MySQL.

Sometimes it’s a terrible idea to do set-based operations in SQL. There are real-world constraints, especially in heavily used OLTP or large databases, that require doing things a tiny bit at a time. In this article I’ll show you how to write a job that can purge data from a huge table without impacting critical processes, filling up the transaction log, or causing deadlocks. I have released a tool that does a fantastic job of archiving and purging MySQL tables, as part of MySQL Toolkit.

Last Sunday I was heading out to a party when I overheard the conversation of "You shouldn't buy an iPod, they have a horrible interface". Now this always holds my interest since I do believe that the interface to my iPod could be a lot better. I stepped into the conversation and heard similar complaints as mine as to why the iPod was the wrong interface, and I also got an earfull on the "Geek Interface".

What is the "Geek Interface"? It is the interface that all geeks want.

It has a thousand buttons.
It will fetch RSS for you.
It reads your email.
It will control your remote vacuum cleaner/indestructible fighting robot.
It probably has an interface to a database (or this could be just because I work for MySQL).

Every geek wants one of these. They want it to be wearable, they want it to look cool.

The "geek …

So here are a few photos from me that I've taken at the Conference and around. So let's start with my hotel.

      

It was quite a cheap hotel and to be honest - not the very cleanest one. But I didn't spend much time there anyway, so why bother. But what's that against the litter that I could find on the streets and sidewalks (to not be misunderstood I'd like to add that none of the litter is from me ;-)).

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I often wonder if commercial open source applications, things like MySQL, EnterpriseDB, SugarCRM are underpriced. Open source companies tend to start out as low-cost then as they mature that low-cost remains while the features and quality grow which then (in theory) moves to a differentiation strategy.

But would the market bear a higher price? It seems like the answer is starting to be yes...but how much higher still remains to be seen.

HBS suggests low prices aren't always the best strategy in this article Low Prices = More Customers? Not Always

You should not overindulge your customer. Instead, make sure that you extract fair value for what you deliver. Aggressive and acquiescent actions hinder your own efforts to pursue higher profits. [C]ustomer giveaways, value attacks, and aggressive price cuts represent a huge …