I'll be teaching the MySQL 5.0 for DBAs training course in Sydney, 6-10 Feb. There are still a few places available, so if you were looking at MySQL training in Australia, this may be for you!

Note that beginning with MySQL 5.0, we have split our training courses (and certification) into separate components for Developers and DBAs. So the abovementioned course is about topics like management and optimization, and not about basic use and developing apps.

I like teaching training courses, there are always very interesting discussions and ideas. Nothing beats the real world...
Anyway, our training courses are highly interactive, and students have individual machines to do exercises on (or their own laptop, if they prefer). So it's not at all like a lecture (eew, boooooring ;-)

I'll be teaching the MySQL 5.0 for DBAs training course in Sydney, 6-10 Feb. There are still a few places available, so if you were looking at MySQL training in Australia, this may be for you!

Note that beginning with MySQL 5.0, we have split our training courses (and certification) into separate components for Developers and DBAs. So the abovementioned course is about topics like management and optimization, and not about basic use and developing apps.

I like teaching training courses, there are always very interesting discussions and ideas. Nothing beats the real world...
Anyway, our training courses are highly interactive, and students have individual machines to do exercises on (or their own laptop, if they prefer). So it's not at all like a lecture (eew, boooooring ;-)

We often hear about open source vs. commercial software, but what about when there is no commercial software?

Believe it or not, this actually happens. Last month I was at an industry tradeshow, and I walked into a conference session about software. In of itself, this was a rarity--usually, trade show attendees are too busy buying and selling to listen to software vendors. The closet you might get at one of these shows is a talk on search engine optimization or email marketing.

Even more amazing, this session was well-attended. After a while, I realized why. This industry had no commercial software vendors serving it, because it is an industry with a lot of small businesses and very complicated business processes. The former means that specialized commercial applications vendors couldn't serve them profitably. The latter means that off-the-shelf desktop accounting programs couldn't really satisfy their needs.
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The MySQL Meetup group meeting on Monday, January 9th will focus on backups — I will give a 30-45 minute presentation on backups and we will then delve into a discussion — how folks within the group are backing up, how they’re not backing up, how they’d like to back up. If there’s time, we’ll do a “lessons learned from backup horror stories”.

Afterwards, we’ll head a few doors down to Boston Beer Works for more chatting.

You can see a video of last month’s presentation by Philip Antionades of MySQL AB on the new features in MySQL 5.0 at Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mysql+5.0+by+Philip+Antoniades

(we will video this month’s presentation but not the discussion)

More details, including the event location and directions, are at: …

Gojira est mort... Vive Gojira.

Yesterday morning, I discovered that the machine this site used to run on had quietly gone belly-up sometime during the night - it seems that the system drive and the disk controller ate themselves, or ate each other, or some such thing. Fortunately, the drive that all the site files and databases lived on survived. So after shuffling some bits around and a fun-filled day installing the operating system, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. and recreating all the lost configs, Gojira lives again. The old Gojira was an 800 MHz Celeron with 384 MB memory, and the new one is only a 433 MHz Pentium-3, but it's got 768 MB RAM, and actually runs loads faster. I've also got my eye on a couple of machines at the local hockshop that are faster, and with the spare RAM from the Gojira That Was, I could come close to matching my deaktop (a 2.8 GHz P-4 with a gig of memory) for less than AU$500, I think. In any case, I've come to the …

Gojira est mort... Vive Gojira.

Yesterday morning, I discovered that the machine this site used to run on had quietly gone belly-up sometime during the night - it seems that the system drive and the disk controller ate themselves, or ate each other, or some such thing. Fortunately, the drive that all the site files and databases lived on survived. So after shuffling some bits around and a fun-filled day installing the operating system, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. and recreating all the lost configs, Gojira lives again. The old Gojira was an 800 MHz Celeron with 384 MB memory, and the new one is only a 433 MHz Pentium-3, but it's got 768 MB RAM, and actually runs loads faster. I've also got my eye on a couple of machines at the local hockshop that are faster, and with the spare RAM from the Gojira That Was, I could come close to matching my deaktop (a 2.8 GHz P-4 with a gig of memory) for less than AU$500, I think. In any case, I've come to the …

The Linux Format magazine is having it’s annual reader awards in a number of categories.

These include (I’ve include my picks after each category):

• Best Desktop Application (Gnome)
• Best Distro (CentOS 4.2)
• Best Development Tool (Eclipse 3.1)
• Best Hardware Support (NVidia for my Dell Laptop)
• Free Software Project of the Year (Gaim)
• Embedded Linux Award
• Best Server Software (MySQL 5.0)
• Best Office Software (Open Office …

Total cost of ownership (TCO) for relational databases is, in my opinion, comprised of 3 parts. License cost, support costs and the people costs of maintaining and managing the database.

The first component, database license cost, is a one-time fee paid to the vendor for the right to use the database on one processor. The license is generally perpetual, so youll need to work this out over the expected life time of the application or the time you’re going to continue to use database software. In some cases, if this money has already been spent, you might not include it in the TCO estimates.

Second, the ongoing support costs must be included. For Informix, DB2 and Oracle the support cost is usually a percentage (typically between 15% and 23%) of the initial license purchase price. In my experience it can range between $5k and $10K per CPU depending on which database you’re using and the initial purchase price for the licenses. …

David Logan (HP) and Greg Lehey (MySQL) have started a MySQL User Group in Adelaide, South Australia.

The first meeting will be on Thursday, 2 Feb 2006, 7pm at HP House, 148 Frome St., Adelaide. Special guest speaker is Brian Aker, MySQL Director of Architecture! (Brian will also be visiting LinuxConfAU 2006 in Dunedin, and the MySQL User Group in Brisbane).

Sign up (free) and RSVP for the Adelaide event at http://mysql.meetup.com/139/.

David Logan (HP) and Greg Lehey (MySQL) have started a MySQL User Group in Adelaide, South Australia.

The first meeting will be on Thursday, 2 Feb 2006, 7pm at HP House, 148 Frome St., Adelaide. Special guest speaker is Brian Aker, MySQL Director of Architecture! (Brian will also be visiting LinuxConfAU 2006 in Dunedin, and the MySQL User Group in Brisbane).

Sign up (free) and RSVP for the Adelaide event at http://mysql.meetup.com/139/.