we?re* hatching plans for a mysql performance tuning & optimization workshop in los angeles the week of october 24. if that?s the sort of thing you would be interested in, let our tenacious sales people know.

to be clear, this would not be free ? these workshops are usually $995/person.

* and by we, i mean not me.

OSBC (Open Source Business Conference) has been a great conference that brings the technology and business side of open source technology.  The conference was the brain child of Matt Asay from Novell and the conference gets better and better each year.  If you're on the east coast, this is a great conference to get up close to open source business issues, licensing, community building and a host of other topics.  The conference program includes a who's who of open source execs including Marten Mickos of MySQL, Eben Moglen of the FSF, Scott Dietzen from Zimbra, Marc Fleury of JBoss, John Roberts of SugarCRM as well as a host of other open source CEOs, VCs, and others. 

About a month ago the last version of XAMPP was relased and now it's again time for an updated version. MySQL and PHP released new versions of their software and as usual we need to follow in their footsteps.

New in this version of XAMPP: MySQL was upgraded to version 4.1.14, and PHP was upgraded to version 5.0.5. FPDF (version 1.53) and PostgeSQL support in PHP were newly added.

The next XAMPP for Windows version will be out at beginning October. At the moment we are so busy and not able to synchronise the release of our XAMPP versions.

Goto download!

I just finished an upgrade to Shaw Extreme cable internet for my home network. The service requires that you change from a Terayon modem to a Motorola SurfBoard modem, and the payment of an extra $10 a month, but from what I can tell it will be oh so worth it.

Just before switching modems I started a download of the debug version of MySQL 5.0.12 (50 megs), I got around 300-400K per second. After the upgrade I tried the same download from the same mirror and saw 800-830K per second. SO far so good.

Of course, seeing that I host some sites from home, I was more interested in the upstream. Here BroadBandReports.com helps:

Certainly a step from the claimed 1.5 up / .5 down that my old service claimed. The new speed is supposed to be 7 down 1 up, and while the download speed is not hitting the claim, the upstream is right on target (according to BroadBandReports the …

kaj arnö is the latest mysql executive to get bitten by the blogging bug. he?s going to be taking up the mantle of vp/community relations soon. zack urlocker, our vp/marketing, was the first executive to jump on the bandwagon.

Many thanks to those who have reviewed the sample database a posted about a couple of days ago. One question that seems to come to mind is this: where should the line between completeness and simplicity be drawn?

On the one hand I want to keep the database relatively simple: too many tables may confuse new users, so perhaps normalization should be demonstrated, but not everywhere (as an example the sample database has a customer table that is very un-normalized).

On the other hand, new users may take a sample database as an example of how things should be done, in which case you want to present them with as complete and usable of a database as possible. You would want to normalize customer data so the users are not left with the impression that a customer table should have just one column for a phone number.

What do you think? Where should the line be drawn when creating a sample database so that the users have a good …

Germany’s highly regarded c’t magazine has some articles on databases in their 20/2005 issue that should hit the stores today.

1. A database comparison
2. A database GUI comparison
3. A database challenge (the only one available online)

The articles are very well researched. The only errors I could find were caused by myself when I didn’t respond in time ot the author of the database comparison. Yes, MyISAM has full text search. Yes, MySQL 5.0 has stored procedures, triggers, views and subqueries, regardless of whether you use InnoDB or MyISAM as the table handler. Sorry, Peter Schüler, for not replying in time!

The first article compares MySQL, Firebird, PostgreSQL, MSDE 2000 and (conditionally) SQLite.

• Firebird is portrayed as an “even …

In trying to wrangle Tom Friedman, author of The World Is Flat and I have been exchanging emails in (my) hope to have him keynote OSBC San Francisco. (My review of his book is here.)

Unfortunately, he's traveling then (don't ask where - it's a sign of how flat the world really is that I don't even know which planet the city he's visiting is on :-). In his last email, he said something that really hit me, touching as it did on what Nicholas wrote recently:And how are we going to help those poor people so they are not going to be poor anymore? Through Linux or Bono? Through open source or Live Aid?I had a long train ride today, and I thought about this …

Active Endpoints, Inc., the leading independent provider of SOA integration solutions, today announced its membership in the MySQL® Network Certified Partners Program. As a member of the MySQL Network Certified Partner Program, Active Endpoints has added support for MySQL to its ActiveWebflow™ server line, offering new alternatives for customers seeking to develop and deploy high value, low cost BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) based solutions.