In May, I presented two talks – one called “Are you getting the best out of your indexes?” and “Optimizing Queries Using EXPLAIN”. I now have slides and video for both of them.

The first talk about indexing should probably be titled “Why is MySQL doing this?!!?!!?” It gives insight into why the MySQL optimizer chooses indexes that you do not expect; especially when it does not use an index you expect it to.

The talk has something for everyone – for beginners it explains B-trees and how they work, and for the more seasoned DBA it explains concepts like average value group size, and how the optimizer uses those concepts applied to metadata to make decisions.

Slides are at http://technocation.org/files/doc/2017_05_MySQLindexes.pdf.
Click the slide image below to go to the video at …

The main schedule for the Percona Live Data Performance Conference is available. Almost everything has been defined. There are tutorials and plenty of sessions waiting for conference attendees.

One thing that is still undefined is the session of lightning talks. The …

PalominoDB CEO Laine Campbell presented this class at the O'Reilly Velocity Conference, NYC Oct 2013. The class is broken into two videos and is a total of 85 minutes.

Click here for Part 1 - Click here for Part 2

Laine will explain the options for running MySQL at high volumes at Amazon Web Services, exploring options around database as a service, hosted instances/storages and all appropriate availability, performance and provisioning considerations using real-world examples from Call of Duty, Obama for America and many more.

Laine will show how to build highly available, manageable and performant MySQL environments that scale in AWS—how to maintain then, grow them and deal with failure. Some of the specific topics covered are:

…

The Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013 is almost 1 month away. It's time to start planning, set the expectations, and decide what to attend. This post will give a roundup of some of the sessions that I recommend attending and I look forward to.

First, the unexpected!

After much talk and disbelief, here they come! Oracle engineers will participate to the Percona Live conference. This is wonderful! Their participation was requested by the organizers, by the attendees, and by community advocates, who all told the Oracle management how important it is to be in this conference. Finally, they have …

On July 4 I gave two presentations at the OTN Tour Day, and on July 5 I have three presentations at the MySQL Training Days. This was my 3rd visit to Colombia and it was great to see a receptive audience. Thanks to Robin for organizing the events in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

You can download all presentations from the provided links.

• MySQL Backup and Recovery Essentials
• MySQL Security Essentials
• MySQL Performance Analysis Essentials
• …

Why demos?

For as long as I can remember in my public speaking activities, I have always planned my presentations with some sort of live demo in it. I am always surprised when a conference venue asks me to provide my slides in advance, to be loaded in an anonymous computer with no chance of demos. I always turn down such offers, as I always want to provide a demo.

There have been times when technical or time constraints prevented me from demoing something, and in these cases I felt that the presentation was lacking a vital part. But I always try. I have even given demos during lightning talks, and those were the ones that made me feel really good.

I have given hundreds of presentations, and hundreds of demos, and as in every human activity, I have made plenty of mistakes. I believe I have learned some valuable lesson from my mistakes, and this article is my attempt at sharing the joy with wannabe presenters and also with …

A panel on “Future Perfect: The Road Ahead for MySQL“, by Brian Aker (HP), Paul Mikesell (Clustrix), Sundar Raghavan (Amazon), Slavik Markovich (McAffee), and Ori Hernstadt (Akiban).

If there’s one common theme to this panel and  this whole conference, it’s: “We’re hiring!” It is amazing how much talent there is at the conference this year, and yet, it isn’t enough. Pythian is hiring as well of course: http://bit.ly/pythianjobs.

There was an interesting distinction between the mindset of Oracle and of MySQL made by Brian Aker: database as a service, which is something MySQL seems to be getting to. It comes with its own problems, especially around trust levels, which will lead to more thinking around data security (rather than just database security).

MySQL vs. NoSQL. Different Tools for Different Jobs …

Wow! A lot has changed since the last MySQL conference I blogged about in 2007.

MySQL has been acquired twice: once as MySQL by Sun and the second time around bundled with Sun when Oracle bought Sun. The conference is no longer organized by O’Reilly but by Percona. And the MySQL database itself has changed — we were talking about new features in MySQL 5.1, which wasn’t released yet, along with Falcon (where did it go?). 5.1 has long since been released as has 5.5, and we’re now talking about 5.6 instead of 6.0. There was no “Cloud” on the horizon, nor was there MariaDB, XtraDB, Drizzle, Schooner, or any of the other offshoots of MySQL, all of which are creating a new buzz around the product.

Yet, one thing remains constant: the vibrant community around MySQL. In spite of all the changes in technology, ownership, versions, …

After 15 years of slide show technology, I thought that we need to change the way we do presentations. And since I am advocating radical changes, I will eat my own dog food and be the first to present a MySQL session using 3D technology.

Since watching Avatar a few years ago, I thought that using this technology would make my presentations truly amazing. However, two years ago a 3d projector was prohibitively expensive. Now, instead, it is affordable, and fits in my briefcase!

What I needed, though, was a compelling reason for using 3d vs. traditional presentations. And I found it. As I have mentioned recently, I am working with the coolest replication technology on earth. Explaining this technology is often challenging. While regular replication …