The latest from the MySQL community

O'Reilly's
Make magazine
and the
Maker Faire
that we're hosting today and tomorrow in San Mateo, California have
been described in many ways, ranging from a revival of the
mid-20th-century love for Popular Mechanics magazine to an
exciting new impetus for teaching children about science. During my
six hours there today, I noted its strong connections to powerful and
fundamental human urges toward creation, mastery, and the reproduction
of our own culture.

Some of the Maker Faire centers are devoted to the kind of
do-it-yourself projects shown in our magazine. Anyone from a
four-year-old to a mechanically adept adult can find challenge and
satisfaction at these tables. Projects in another building took a …

O'Reilly's Make magazine and the Maker Faire that we're hosting today and tomorrow in San Mateo, California have been described in many ways, ranging from a revival of the mid-20th-century love for Popular Mechanics magazine to an exciting new impetus for teaching children about science. During my six hours there today, I noted its strong connections to powerful and fundamental human urges toward creation, mastery, and the reproduction of our own culture.

Some of the Maker Faire centers are devoted to the kind of do-it-yourself projects shown in our magazine. Anyone from a four-year-old to a mechanically adept adult can find challenge and satisfaction at these tables. Projects in another building took a big step up, showcasing the brain children of engineers who devoted their spare time to building games and toys or aiding their …

Something that has excited me for a long time with upcoming features in the MySQL Server, is online backup. Since seeing it first being demonstrated by Chuck Bell at the Heidelberg Developers Conference in 2007, I’ve been enthralled. Now you too, can try online backup.

If you’ve not read the Forge Wiki page about it yet, please head over to Online Backup on the Wiki. You can grab the latest source from mysql-6.0-backup from mysql.bkbits.net. If you’ve never built MySQL from source before, go ahead and read Building MySQL from source. And you naturally need to test it once built, so I suggest making use of …

While I was at the MySQL Conference, I sat down with Michael Kimsal of WebDevRadio and recapped the two talks that I gave at the conference.  I have uploaded the slides so you can follow along if you want.

One to a Cluster - The evolution of the dealnews.com architecture.

MySQL Tips and Tricks - Some simple tips and some of the more advanced SQL we use in Phorum.

Thanks Michael.  Any time you need a guest, just let me know.

Pierre suggests that dual-licensing hurts community. Jonathan Schwartz boasts that Java has the world's largest community. MySQL and Sun retreat (a little) from plans to offer closed extensions to the MySQL database because the community gods get angry.

What, exactly, is this "community?" Who gave it so much power? And why do we care about it?

As we'll be discussing on Monday at Sun's Community One conference (note the name?), companies are judged as good or bad based on the strength of their communities. But what is a company's community? In …

While I was at the MySQL Conference, I sat down with Michael Kimsal of WebDevRadio and recapped the two talks that I gave at the conference.  I have uploaded the slides so you can follow along if you want.

One to a Cluster - The evolution of the dealnews.com architecture.

MySQL Tips and Tricks - Some simple tips and some of the more advanced SQL we use in Phorum.

Thanks Michael.  Any time you need a guest, just let me know.

…

On June 21 2008 the third edition of PHP Vikinger will be held in Skien, Norway.

PHP Vikinger is an unconference directed towards everyone who wants to learn more about PHP and likes to discuss and meet with new people. Unlike normal conferences, the talks at an unconference are determined by the attendees, and not by a committee.

Just like in 2006 and 2007, …

Seeing the recent stock market disaster, I wonder if it makes sense to hire capable managers, when your company is hostage of the stockholders mob.
The news delivered by Sun did not seem that bad, except for the USA salesforce. Sun is growing everywhere else in the world, and a slow US economy has punished the whole company out of proportion. The reaction from the crowd is really unbelievable.
On a related matter, Sun has announced the layoff of 2500 people. What does it mean? Sun's strategy is based on growth, or so they say. How can they grow if they start firing people?
Bah!

During my university days when I was working towards a dual degree in Accounting and CIS, I co-founded a small managed hosting company which I ran for four years along with two other co-founders. Then I started a consulting company and eventually moved into online publishing. Things changed and after nearly nine years of being self employed, I took over the very challenging responsibility of single handedly managing and scaling databases of a top 50 site (in 2006). It was definitely not an easy journey and I feel ecstatic to have helped my employer handle 6x growth and rise to being a top 13 site (using same Alexa algorithm).

While I enjoy working with MySQL, Solaris and technology a lot, I really missed being part of business side. Those of you who know me outside my database role, know how much I crave problem solving related to day to day business operations especially strategic decisions, financial, product architecture, …

Sun missed its earnings and sales estimates and as a result it lost approximately 23% of its market capital. Even more disturbing news is the announcement that Sun will be cutting 1500 to 2500 jobs. Eric Day raised his concerns as to whether this job cut will affect MySQL hiring to which Marten replied and pointed to several open positions within MySQL.

Sun has an array of very interesting and useful technologies under its hood. The amount of care Sun takes for its customers is truly impressive and I hope MySQL will follow in Sun's foot steps. Yesterday, I met with a Sun engagement architect and the amount of interest he showed in the technical challenges my team faces was …