I?ve spent the last year and a half noticing the growth and popularity of open source solutions. Using open source to build multi-tiered web based solutions can greatly add to a company?s competitiveness and bottom line by greatly reducing costs and reduce the complexity of managing vendor relationships. I looked at a lot of open source products and companies and the one that stood out to

I probably don't spend quite enough time following progress around MySQL considering how critical the product is to us. I'd like to consider it part of the infrastructure in a way I treat Red Hat Enterprise Linux, ie something I can trust to make good progress and follow up on a quarterly basis. Naturally we have people who watch both much more closely, but my time simply should, and pretty much is, spent doing something else.

However, it seems MySQL really demands a bit more attention right now. Today I went and read Jeremy Cole's opinion about MySQL Community (a failure), and I have to say I agree on many of the points. MySQL simply has not yet found a model that works as well as that of Red Hat's Fedora vs Enterprise …

Community version 1.2.1 of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL, a robust and intelligent solution for backup and recovery of MySQL databases is available for download at Zmanda downloads page.

Changes in this release:

1. Bug fixes
2. Source tar ball (including debian package files)
3. Help from ZRM online sites

For documentation see, ZRM for MySQL users manual. Please use bugzilla to report bugs and feature requests. If you have questions or feedback, please post them in forums.

Apparently while I was attending the BEAWorld and VMworld conferences in San Francisco this week, the pretty blue globe we call home kept on spinning, particularly where GPL v3 is concerned. On Wednesday an interview with Mr. Richard Stallman -- President of the Free Software Foundation -- was published in PC World Australia, from which I'd just like to reproduce a few choice quotes: Regarding the battle between Microsoft and Open (or as Richard puts it, "Free") Source community: Stallman: Nobody knows who will win this fight, because the outcome depends on you and the readers. Will you fight for... READ MORE

I mentioned the Gartner conference among a few of the upcoming open source events this fall. I've been to the past versions of this conference in Phoenix and in Orlando and it's a very good event for managers and newcomers to Open Source. It's not a hardcore technical conference like OSCON or the MySQL conference, but it's very good for its audience. Gartner has come a long way in recent years in helping IT organizations ramp up their use of open source with a carefully considered "best practices" approach backed by good research and thorough analysis. The Gartner guys that... READ MORE

Whenever we have seminars or events on performance tuning of MySQL we always get a good crowd. We've got two performance tuning seminars in the afternoons next week in DC and Boston on Tuesday and Wednesday. There are also morning sessions targeted to managers who want to reduce risk and costs. These are free events and are targeted primarily to OEM / ISV users who embed or bundle MySQL. Still, they are a good way to get some tunings tips and meet others. We'll also figure out a way to get this content online for folks outside of these cities.... READ MORE

Our parent site InfoWorld has just announced it's 36 winners for this year's Best of Open Source Awards. Selected by InfoWorld Test Center editors and reviewers, these first annual Bossies celebrate the best open source software available for the enterprise. From CRM and ERP to OSes and middleware to networking, storage, and security software, our 36 winners prove that if your business is willing and your IT staff is ready, there's an open source solution that's able. Check out the winners: Apps Networking Platforms Security Software Storage Disclosure: MySQL and MuleSource both won, but Zack and I had nothing to... READ MORE

There's a slew of open source conferences coming up this fall in the US and in Europe. Here are a few of the highlights: -Utah Open Source Conference, Sept 6-8, Provo -Rails Conf Europe, Sept 17-19, Berlin -Gartner Open Source Summit, Sept 19-21, Las Vegas -Zend PHP Conference, Oct 8-11, San Francisco -MySQL European Conferences, Oct 16, 18, 23, London, Munich, Paris There's a wide range of choices. If you're a hard core PHP or Rails developer, then hit the technical conferences. If you're a manager looking to figure out a best practices open source strategy, then the Gartner show... READ MORE

I picked this story up from Kevin Burton's feedblog. It turns out that last week, Greg Stein, director of the Apache Foundation was mugged outside his home in Mountain View. Greg was already on crutches at the time so this is a double whammy. Kevin organized a paypal account to for donations raising more than $2500. That money will go towards getting Greg a little R&R in Tahoe or Big Sur. Nice work, Kevin. Greg, get well soon! We'll send over a MySQL care package or some meals or some tech support. Whatever helps you get back on your feet.... READ MORE

One of the frequent requests we've heard from MySQL customers in the last year is the need for more certified DBAs. That's one of the reasons we kicked off some seminars earlier this month to help train Oracle DBAs in MySQL. According to the IOUG more than one third of the Oracle users are also running MySQL. But as with any new technology, they don't always have the in-house skills they need. So we did a test run of a couple of "DBA Bootcamp" seminars in New York and San Francisco to train Oracle DBAs in how to use MySQL.... READ MORE