The latest from the MySQL community

If you are fortunate enough to be in Beijing this week for Oracle Openworld, there are several sessions planned on MySQL to choose from. The English site is somewhat hard to navigate, so I humbly submit a tiny URL that will point you to the appropriate session search results.

Few act from pure motives, and I’m shamelessly plugging my own talks: Improving the Scalability of Web Applications with MySQL Replication, Performance and Scalability Enhancements in MySQL Release 5.5, and MySQL Strategy: What’s Next? (that last I’m merely technical backup for Richard Mason).

There are several other outstanding talks on MySQL migrations, tuning and Cluster as well, and of course an …

I’m back in the blogosphere!

This blog will focus on Smalltalk (mostly Pharo, Squeak, Dolphin, VAST and VW), databases (usually MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, DB2, InterBase and Firebird), algorithms and open source tools.  I’ll throw in some literature, music and mathematics occasionally.

Requirements to enjoy this blog : an interest in problem solving, a database and a Smalltalk environment!

If you are running any GNU/Linux server operating system like RHEL 5 or CentOS 5, you may probably install MySQL server that comes with the operating system packages either during the initial setup or later using yum(8). The advantage being addition/removal of packages either using the GUI package manager or rpm(8), yum(8). Fair enough. But unfortunately the MySQL package (mysql-server) that comes bundled with RHEL 5.5 or CentOS 5.5 is fairly old (5.0.77). What if you want to install the latest stable version of MySQL yet have the advantage of removing/re-installing the software using rpm(8)?

In this blog post, I will guide you with compiling MySQL from source code yet installing the software through rpm(8) so that we tune and configure the software for the target machine and yet uninstall the software using RedHat package manager.

Compiling and Installing MySQL using rpmbuild(8)

First make sure you have sudo(8) access and …

There have been a few great blog posts recently from MySQL bloggers about Postgres, and vice versa, with good comments and follow-on from the real experts in both systems. I think this is wonderful. Learning how other databases solve hard problems is highly educational, especially because ACID databases face some of the hardest problems in computing. Making MySQL better is good for PostgreSQL. The reverse is just as true. And we should also be learning from SQLite, and CouchDB, and others who have overcome tough technical hurdles, built successful companies, created thriving and enthusiastic communities, or whatever their success has been.

Related posts:

1. Postgres folks, consider the 2011 MySQL conference
2. …

On Sunday I will be in Stuttgart with the double purpose of attending the annual European PostrgreSQL conference and the technical meeting of my company that will be held after the normal proceedings of PGDay-EU.
For the first time in several years I am attending a conference where I am not a speaker. In my previous job I did not have much opportunity to attend PostgreSQL meetings, and I welcome this opportunity. The schedule is quite interesting, and I have made my personal picks:

• Monday:
  
  • 09:45 - 10:45 …

Oracle hasn't won many friends in open source communities since its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and Sun's array of open source assets, including MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice. Oracle seems bent on continuing this trend with the growing Hudson open source project.

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Some time ago I was asked to do a study of our most popular open source projects to assess 1) what governance models are out there and 2) if the governance model has any effect on the project's success (such as size of developer community) on the one hand and on the other hand on the business of the related vendor(s). Some of the results are quite remarkable and have general applicability, so I wanted to share them here:

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The 451 Group's annual report on the state of the open source business world is out. Already the title: Control and Community suggests they are once again on top of what has been going on this year. Analyzing about 300 open source related businesses they not only "get it right", but were actually able to uncover some facts even I was unaware of and this impressed me a lot. If an analyst can dig up statistics to back up something that I already "intuitively" know in my heart, that is a useful service. But if they can make me go "ah, I didn't know that" on a topic I consider myself quite an expert in, the I'm impressed!

This is an analyst report, available for a price that would be completely unreasonable for a private person. I was pondering whether I should go begging for a free copy to satisfy my curiosity on the topic. But that wasn't necessary, as the …

Last week I announced internally that after my paternity leave ends next year, I will not be returning to Monty Program.

When I joined the company over a year ago I was immediately involved in drafting a project plan for the Open Database Alliance and its relation to MariaDB. We wanted to imitate the model of the Linux Foundation and Linux project, where the MariaDB project would be hosted by a non-profit organization where multiple vendors would collaborate and contribute. We wanted MariaDB to be a true community project, like most successful open source projects are - such as all other parts of the LAMP stack.

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