Here are the slides from our fellow Alexander Aulbach. The cluster slides are available both in German and English. Feel free to contact him directly if you have any questions.

MySQL Cluster (German language): MySQL-Cluster.pdf
MySQL Cluster (English language): MySQLCluster_en.pdf
Chomsky Typ3 Sprachen oder "Hab Spaß mit RegEx": KomskyTyp-3Sprachen.pdf

Did you know that MySQL Cluster has been available since MySQL 4 within the Max distribution (IIRC 4.1 series)? So just grab your copy at mysql.com (of course the new 5.x series :-) and play with the cluster.

I'm typing this story from a latop that costs somewhere north of $1500.  And that's just for the hardware.  By the time you pay the Windows and Office tax, it's probably closer to $2,000.  (Ok, I know David Axmark is on me to use OpenOffice more and I probably should do that.)  To me, it's a minor inconvenience to have to pay for Microsoft Office just because everyone else uses it and it's one less hassle in terms of converting documents.  But it's not life or death for me.  But for millions of kids in Cambodia and other third world countries, you could well make the argument.

Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of MIT's prestigious Media Lab, has spearheaded an effort to deliver a $100 laptop computer that could help drive education and economic development in third world countries.  Not surprisingly, the laptop foregoes expensive hardware and …

There are some people who haven't filled in have their email address or complete name for their mysql.com accounts. Those accounts are used for forum activity, the bugs system, and right now to identify our lucky MySQL 5 Contest winners, which makes it rather important that the basic information in there is complete and correct.

Of course, if you don't want to fill in those details, that's fine too, but unfortunately it will rule you out as a possible winner. If Kaj and I don't know your name or your email address, what can we do... to check and update your profile, go to http://www.mysql.com/profile/.

Next week we will give away the last weekly iPod nano, as well as announe the three grand prize winners. As you see in the contest rules, the grand prize …

There are some people who haven't filled in have their email address or complete name for their mysql.com accounts. Those accounts are used for forum activity, the bugs system, and right now to identify our lucky MySQL 5 Contest winners, which makes it rather important that the basic information in there is complete and correct.

Of course, if you don't want to fill in those details, that's fine too, but unfortunately it will rule you out as a possible winner. If Kaj and I don't know your name or your email address, what can we do... to check and update your profile, go to http://www.mysql.com/profile/.

Next week we will give away the last weekly iPod nano, as well as announe the three grand prize winners. As you see in the contest rules, the grand prize …

The lucky winner of the tiny funky iPod nano this week is Peter Brawley. Peter has submitted a number of good bug reports for MySQL 5, and happens to also be an active participant on the MySQL Forums and Mailing Lists. Great work, Peter! Thanks.

The lucky winner of the tiny funky iPod nano this week is Peter Brawley. Peter has submitted a number of good bug reports for MySQL 5, and happens to also be an active participant on the MySQL Forums and Mailing Lists. Great work, Peter! Thanks.

As promised, here's now the first part of the slides from the International PHP Conferences. The sessions I gave were the introduction for the Management Day, "100,000 SQLite installations - lessons learned" (and where the borders are in regards to the usage of MySQL) and "WebServices with PHP5".

Download Management Day slides: phpconf05_managementday.pdf
Download SQLite slides: phpconf05_sqlite.pdf
Download WebServices with PHP5 talk: phpconf05_webservices_php5.pdf

So, Host Marriott is buying $4 billion worth of Starwood Hotels properties. Note, however, that it was Host Marriott, and not Marriott Hotels, that bought the hotels. In other words, Host Marriott (which owns Marriott's physical properties) will now own Sheratons, etc. As described in a great Financial Times [Subscription !$!#!$ required], hotel companies increasingly see themselves as marketing/branding companies, and not property owners.

Who doesn't, these days?

Seriously, Google piggybacks on content owners. Red Hat piggybacks on Linux kernel hackers [though it is now actively …

It's been a while that I spoke at a larger conference, this time at the Open Source Database Conference 2005 in Frankfurt.

Besides meeting a lot of collegues and other attendees of the OSDB Conf as well of the PHP International Conf, I presented the new features in MySQL 5.1

I put a copy of the slides on my website. Cheers!

Tonight's MySQL meetup in Boston turned out to be quite an event. At one point early on I counted around 40, but people came in throughout the meeting so would guess somewhere shy of 50. The format was informal, everyone was given a chance to introduce themselves, say where they work, what they do and what they'd like to get out of future MySQL meetups. I wished I had brought my camera, but I rushed off this morning without it.

Sheeri did a great job of coordinating, fostering conversation and keeping the discussion on focus. There were two things during the evening that made me a bit nervous and are worthy of note for future meetings. First, perhaps I'm a bit hypersensitive to marketing, but I cringed when the conversation started to feel like a pitch. I appreciated Sheeri steering the conversation back to focus on the group when it started to go toward a sales pitch for MySQL and …