I’ll be following closely the progression of Storage Engines available in the MySQL Database server, well soon to be available when 5.1 gets to GA (hopefully by end of Q2 which is what we have been told). Tick, Tick, time is running out.

PrimeBase XT (PBXT) and Blob Streaming is obviously my clear focus, actually now working for PrimeBase Technologies, the company which I want to note for people is an Open Source company, committed at providing an open source alternative to the other commercial players. You also have at the MySQL Conference talks on the the existing InnoDB from Innobase (a subsidiary of market RDBMS leader Oracle). There is a …

Tonight’s Hamburg MySQL Meetup was a packed room of 60-70 people at Sun in Hamburg. The most I’ve seen @ a MySQL Meetup across three cities, countries, continents and years (my first Oct 5, 2004).

As expected most was in German. Pity, I would have liked to hear about Open Office and MySQL. Giuseppe, CCO (That’s Chief Cartoon Officer - I liked that one) gave in English a general review of MySQL. He highlighted the reasons “Why did Sun by MySQL?” including most popular, most dynamic and people with the Freedom to work anywhere.

Three points I would like to re-iterate for the community.

• The

MySQL Forge contains the Worklogs, i.e. what is going to be developed in current & future …

I’ve managed my first week (well 4 days) at my new employer PrimeBase Technologies. Another open source company, a different open source company, my second in succession . A company that actually has it’s parent roots in the commercial sector and this is now branching into Open Source and supporting the community.

While my departure from MySQL was really no surprise to friends within the MySQL community, just some shock of the accelerated timing. Actually it should not have been a shock to my employer either as I’d expressed clearly these intentions in two reviews in the past twelve months. My April Fool’s managed to shock and catch out many to continue this saga.

Our focus has been the …

I had need to show my new employer the official MySQL business shirt, so I did a Google Search on “mysql conference photos” (without the quotes) as I know I’ve seen photos of staff at the conference online before. Google Search Link

To my utter surprise, Google provided 3 image search results. Two of them were of Paul McCUllagh, colleague of my new company PrimeBase Technologies. Not only was this unexpected, the first image of Paul was actually from my own Blog. Go figure how we managed that Search Engine Optimization.

Here I am at my desk sporting the PrimeBase supporters t-shirt that will be available at the exhibitors booth at the 2008 MySQL Conference. The front is rather uneventful with the official logo, but the back will be worth the experience. So everybody interested in supporting PBXT as the transactional storage engine for MySQL developed by the community and for the community, please come and see us and mention the secret password.

We have been placed way back in the right hand side of the exhibitors hall at booth 518, in front of the Open Source and OEM providers.

Today I was asked a question about defining custom extensions for vim syntax highlighting such that, for example, vim would know that example.lmx is actually of type xml and apply xml syntax highlighting to it. I know vim already automatically does it not just based on extension but by looking for certain strings inside the text, like <?xml but what if my file doesn't have such strings?

After digging around I found the solution. Add the following to ~/.vimrc (the vim configuration file):

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syntax on
filetype on
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.lmx set filetype=xml

After applying it, my .lmx file is highlighted:

…

Today I started my new job at PrimeBase Technologies. The company that has brought you the PBXT and Blob Streaming Pluggable Storage Engines for MySQL 5.1.

My move to Germany has gone mostly without incident and now I’m settling in to different weather, language and food, plus the change in time zones +6 hours.

A smaller company from my previous, but I’m part of a larger group then expected. One of 26 people in the office. It’s good to have a desk, a big monitor (and definitely not a German keyboard) and see and talk to people on various topics and interests in comparison to either past work at home by myself, or on a new customer site each week during my consulting days.

Preparations for the upcoming …

Contrary to my earlier April Fool’s Stuck - No country to call home I’m alive and well in Hamburg Germany with my new job at PrimeBase Technologies.

Thanks for those concerned MySQL souls that fell pray to my “Evil Genius” as Farhan called it.

Looking forward to seeing people at the MySQL User Conference in Santa Clara in two weeks.

In a sense of ironic fate I’m officially stuck between countries. (I feel a little like Tom Hanks in one of his movies, need to find the name of it).

As part of my resignation from MySQL/SUN, I was required to leave the US within 10 days to satisfy visa requirements. I packed, stored, discarded and arrived at the airport with 2 suit-cases of belongings to leave one country - The US, and enter another - Germany.

I don’t require a visa to enter Germany, normally. However as I’m leaving the country permanently and relocating to Germany I do. So I can’t leave, but I also can’t stay (as I’m at 10 days)

This leaves me with little choices. I can’t work now in the US, I’ve violated my visa obligations for the future, even a career change won’t help me here. I may never be able to enter the US again. Seems my only option right now is to return to Australia ahead of plans.

Those hoping to see me at …

Continuing on from my lightning visits with Jan Kneschke and Michael Zinner, today I got to spend a day with Paul McCullagh at his home in Hamburg Germany.

Paul is the architect of the PBXT Pluggable Storage Engine for MySQL 5.1, and also the Blob Streaming Storage Engine. His work was acknowledged with the MySQL Community contributor for the year in 2007. The successful PrimeBase product for the publishing Industry in Europe and North America also now uses PBXT for underlying data storage which is great …