The MySQL Workbench team has released the latest Release Candidate 5.0.15 of their new DBMS modeling tool. This includes quite a few recent bug fixes and it's now rapidly approaching the GA status. The team continues on to fix all the minor nits out there so keep your feedback coming. Heck, they'll probably have a new version by the time I post this. If you've never used a database modeling tool or have been put off by the cost or complexity of these tools in the past, you should try MySQL Workbench. Mike Zinner and his team have focused on... READ MORE

EnterpriseDB just raised $10M in Series C financing. IBM joined the list of investors including Fidelity Ventures, Valhalla Partners and Charles River Ventures. To date, EnterpriseDB has raised $37.5M (compared to the $39M that MySQL had raised in total after Series C). EnterpriseDB uses the slogan "The Oracle-compatible database company". While I wish Andy and the folks at EnterpriseDB the best, the challenge is that Oracle's high end products aren't in danger of losing to OSS competition. Next, in the majority of Oracle deals, Oracle isn't selling a database anymore. They are selling a database, an application server, tools and... READ MORE

If you are part of a big company and would like to recommend to them a list of open-source and cheap commercial alternatives, I have compiled a list that I use for my company.

These options might make your company more competitive in certain markets and might let you react faster to changes.


Here is the list:

Database - DataWarehouse
InfoBright - Commercial DataWarehouse Engine (highly recommended) that runs inside MySQL. review about it

EnterpriseDB - Commercial Enterprise Scale Database that runs inside PostgreSQL

Vertica - A very high-scale, …

Today Sun and Zmanda announced our agreement to deliver a comprehensive, global data backup and recovery solution for MySQL Enterprise subscribers. Starting April 1st, MySQL Enterprise customers will be able to purchase ZRM for MySQL directly from Sun worldwide.

I think Zack’s comment in the press release captures the rationale for the deal:

“Protecting corporate data through effective backup and recovery is one of the most crucial tasks for a database administrator, and it can be a complex undertaking — especially for today’s large Web-scale applications,” said Zack Urlocker, VP of products, Sun Microsystems database group. “MySQL users have told us that global backup and recovery is very important to them, and we are thrilled that we can now offer ZRM for MySQL as an easy-to-use solution for protecting all of their MySQL data.”

Of …

North Bridge, a leading Venture Capital firm has launched a survey on the Future of Open Source. Results from the survey will be announced at a panel session at InfoWorld's OSBC conference in San Francisco March 25-26. The session is hosted by Michael Skok of North Bridge and panelists include Marten Mickos from MySQL, John Roberts from SugarCRM and Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical among others.... READ MORE

MySQL being acquired by Sun has of course put a lot of focus on the success of MySQL so far, but it is also interesting to think what success will mean as part of Sun too. In this light a recent interview of MÃ¥rten by Business Review Online about the acquisition was inspiring. (As words from MÃ¥rten usually are!)

"It's a marathon, not a sprint," he said. "If a 15-year-old downloads MySQL now, when do we get our money? In about 15 years' time when he is head of IT at a company and he loves MySQL. But in many cases it will happen sooner than that."

"In open source we say fail fast, scale fast. Many web 2.0 ideas will fail, but when Google or Facebook [two of MySQL's biggest customers] get it right they suddenly need to scale like crazy," Mickos said. "Open source is the only model where they can scale fast on exactly the …

Recently I have been asked by my company to make a case for open-source ETL-data integration tools as an alternative for the commercial data integration tool, Informatica PowerCenter.
So I did a lot of research and I'm going to try my best, considering I have never used the open-source tools nor the commercial one.

I found plenty of information about comparisons between Pentaho Kettle and Talend, which were 2 of the open-source tools I was supposed to research.
Now, without getting in a big arguement (or matt casters posting on my blog), I'd like to attempt to compare the two, very briefly.
And again, this is ONLY from the research I did online and not based on my experience using the tools (since I dont really have any).


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For many developers, MySQL and PHP go together like peanut butter and jam. MySQL has a long history of working with the PHP community and that's a commitment that will continue forever. If you've thought scripting languages weren't powerful enough for "real programming" take a look at recent facilities like PDO and the Zend Framework. MySQL has also developed a native PHP driver that has become very popular. This past week to celebrate our commitment to PHP, Sun and MySQL held a meetup / cocktail reception and job fair at PHP Quebec, one of the biggest PHP conferences. Jay Pipes,... READ MORE

Zmanda has introduced a new version of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) which adds quite a few capabilities for MySQL users. Version 2.1 includes enhanced snapshot support that enables backup without application downtime or interruption to online data access. Version 2.1 also has global management of backups so that you can manage all your MySQL backup jobs from a single graphical console. You can now run the entire ZRM solution on Solaris as well as on Linux.

Join us for an overview and a live demo of ZRM 2.1 on Thursday 3/20 at 10am PST. Click here to register.

As Matt reported last week, IBM announced that it was bowing out of the solidDB for MySQL project. "Those of you who know Solid's history know that Solid has long been a leader in the area of in-memory database software. This in-memory technology, and not Solid's open source offering, was the key driver behind IBM's acquisition. As a result, I regret to inform you that, effective immediately, we will not be continuing further development on solidDB for MySQL. solidDB for MySQL will continue to be hosted and available here at SourceForge, and existing releases will continue to be available under... READ MORE