Two themes emerged at this week's MySQL conference: Mix your relational database with less formal solutions and move to the cloud. Naturally, the event included many other talks of a more immediate practical nature: data warehousing and business intelligence, performance (both in MySQL configuration and in the environment, which includes the changes caused by replacing disks with Flash), how to scale up, and new features in both MySQL and its children. But everyone seemed to agree that MySQL does not stand alone.

The world of databases have changed both in scale and in use. As Baron Schwartz said in his broad-vision keynote, databases are starting to need to handle petabytes. And he criticized open source database options as having poorer performance than proprietary ones. As for use, the databases struggle to meet two types of requirements: requests from business users for …

I chatted today about VMware's Cloud Foundry with Roger Bodamer, the EVP of products and technology at 10Gen. 10Gen's MongoDB is one of three back-ends (along with MySQL and Redis) supported from the start by Cloud Foundry.

If I understand Cloud Foundry and VMware's declared "Open PaaS" strategy, it should fill a gap in services. Suppose you are a developer who wants to loosen the bonds between your programs and the hardware they run on, for the sake of flexibility, fast ramp-up, or cost savings. Your choices are:

An IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) product, which hands you an emulation of bare metal where you run an appliance (which you may need to build up yourself) combining an operating system, application, and related services such as DNS, firewall, and a …

This is the third post in a series about developing the MepSQL build system. In the previous posts we chose BuildBot running in the Amazon EC2 cloud. In this post we actually get a closer look at how the packages are being built (to be followed by even closer looks in later posts :-)

One of the things missing when you fork MySQL is the build system. (The other main missing component being the manual.) It is possible for anyone to compile MySQL from source, but the actual build system (scripts, testing, etc) used by MySQL itself is not public. The same is true for the automated testing. MariaDB uses the open source tool called …

This Friday at SCaLE 9x in Los Angeles, CA there will be a special build an open source cloud day teaching users how to use technologies from Cloud.com, OpenStack, Opscode and Zenoss to deploy, configure, manage and monitor infrastructure-as-a-service using open source software.

Here’s an overview of the program:

“Build a Cloud Day” will be dedicated to teaching users how to build and manage a cloud computing environment using free and open source software. The program is designed to expose attendees to the concepts and best practices around deploying …

This is the second part in a series of posts about how the MepSQL packages were built. In part 1 I evaluated OpenSuse Build System and Launchpad PPA and ended up concluding that running your own BuildBot system is the best choice, as those public services didn't provide any facility to test their packages.

This brings us to the next topic: As I don't possess any servers, should I buy one (or more) or should I try out the cloud services? If yes, should I use Amazon EC2 or something else?

read more

Series

What are the chances for a free software cloud?

• Resolving the contradictions between web services, clouds, and open source
• Defining clouds, web services, and other remote computing
• Why clouds and web services will continue to take over computing
• Why web services should be released as free …

Series

What are the chances for a free software cloud?

• Resolving the contradictions between web services, clouds, and open source
• Defining clouds, web services, and other remote computing
• Why clouds and web services will continue to take over computing
• Why web services should be released as free software (12/20)
• Reaching the pinnacle: truly open web services and clouds (12/22)
…

Topics for this podcast:

*Oracle, Java, the Apache Software Foundation and open source
*An update on some open source database and data management players
*CorraTech grows with support for open source application alternatives
*Red Hat-Makara acquisition analysis and impact
*Linux kernel report shows strong support, but what now for Novell?

iTunes or direct download (29:31, 5.1MB)

Topics for this podcast:

*Our latest CAOS Special Report – Control and Community
*Red Hat releases RHEL 6
*Symbian and Oracle highlight community challenges
*The latest on government adoption of OSS from GOSCON
*Open core issue continues, now with Linux and evil twins

iTunes or direct download (31:02, 8.5MB)

1. 12 Months with MongoDB (Worknik) -- every type of retrieval got faster than their old MySQL store, and there are some other benefits too. They note that the admin tools aren't really there for MongoDB, so "there is a blurry hand-off between IT Ops and Engineering." (via Hacker News)
2. Dawn of a New Day -- Ray Ozzie's farewell note to Microsoft. Clear definition of the challenges to come: At first blush, this world of continuous services and connected devices doesn’t seem very different than today. But those who build, deploy and manage today’s websites understand viscerally that fielding a truly continuous service is incredibly difficult and is only achieved by the most sophisticated …