It was a standing room only crowd at the MySQL Conference and Expo this morning in Santa Clara. With more than 2,000 attendees, this is the largest crowd the conference has ever drawn, which is saying something given that most conferences are projecting much lower numbers with the economic downturn. Perhaps open source is counter-cyclical after all and will continue to do well in tough times.

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I find it surprising that in the official Sun Announcement there is no mention of MySQL for two reasons. Firstly, this was Sun largest single purchase of $1 billion only 12 months ago. Second, MySQL’s largest competitor is Oracle.

While the Sun website shows the news in grandeur, the MySQL website is noticeably absent in any information of it’s owners’ acquisition.

On my professional side, as an independent speaker for Sun Microsystems with plans for upcoming webinars and future speaking on “Best Practices in Migrating to MySQL from Oracle”, this news does not benefit my bottom line.

The AP is reporting that Oracle will buy Sun shares for $9.50 per share, 10 cents more than IBM's reported offer, which fell through. The deal is expected to close in this summer.

Oracle estimates that Sun will contribute more than $1.5 billion and $2 billion to Oracle's profits in the first two years, respectively.

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A new white paper has just been released on mysql.com at http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/white-papers/mysql_wp_cluster_deploy_opencge.php

Open Source Carrier Grade hardware and software stack

Abstract:

Open source technologies and commodity, carrier-grade hardware can combine to create a highly available, scalable and responsive infrastructure to deploy next-generation communications services. This paper examines a solution stack based on integrating Sun GlassFish Communications Server, MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition database, the OpenSolaris operating system, Sun Netra ATCA blades and Sun open storage products into a carrier-grade solution for converged services …

A couple of years back, MySQL embarked upon a strategy to be more open and encourage third-party companies to create their own pluggable storage engines.  The strategy was partly a response to Oracle's acquisition of InnoDB, which was at the time the leading transactional storage engine.  Since then, we've seen new storage engines announced and released every year, typically at the April MySQL Users Conference.

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Few things get our community excited like a major release version of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Today marks availability of the first GnR preview: ZCS 6.0 Beta 1 Open Source Edition. Admins and developers can find it over on the downloads page, for the less technically inclined we’ll also have a new hosted demo up shortly.

Some feature highlights:

» A new horizontal ‘three panel’ view with the message on the right.

» There are now tabs for individual messages as well as the compose page.

» Document & Briefcase access from the standard HTML client.

» Share management & discovery UI that lets you see all shares (email, …

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz wrote a four-part blog posting a few weeks ago describing Sun's overall business model and how it makes money from open source. The basic idea is to go from adoption to innovation and then read more

Dear Kettle & MySQL fans!

I’m really looking forward to go to the MySQL User Conference next week, not just because I’m speaking in 2 sessions again, but perhaps also because these are “interesting” times for MySQL and Sun Microsystems.  Pivotal times it would seem.

Here are the 2 sessions I’m going to do:

• Cloud Computing with MySQL and Kettle : I’m particularly happy that MySQL accepted this session: it will demonstrate how easy it has become to do cloud computing exercises with tools like MySQL and Kettle.

• Starring …

I just read about the release of Honey Monitor for MySQL. I read through the features. I looked at the screenshots. Then I read about the licensing. Then I read about the fact that it only runs on windows XP or Vista. So, my questions for the ages…

1. Why, in this age of multiple OSes battling each other for market share, would you write an application that is OS specific? Every app should run in a vendor neutral web browser unless there’s a really really good reason. Monitoring software, are you kidding? Monitoring software must be vendor neutral and web-based. I will never use anything that ties me to windows or linux or osx, it has to be cross platform. End of story.
2. Why, when MySQL is so heavily used on Linux and Solaris, would you write an application for MySQL that can only be run on Windows? Every MySQL DBA …

I just read about the release of Honey Monitor for MySQL. I read through the features. I looked at the screenshots. Then I read about the licensing. Then I read about the fact that it only runs on windows XP or Vista. So, my questions for the ages…

1. Why, in this age of multiple OSes battling each other for market share, would you write an application that is OS specific? Every app should run in a vendor neutral web browser unless there’s a really really good reason. Monitoring software, are you kidding? Monitoring software must be vendor neutral and web-based. I will never use anything that ties me to windows or linux or osx, it has to be cross platform. End of story.
2. Why, when MySQL is so heavily used on Linux and Solaris, would you write an application for MySQL that can only be run on Windows? Every MySQL DBA …