Peter wrote about this recently, but I don’t know if it was really clear what was going on.

Point One: Sphinx can be contacted by the MySQL protocol. Not “as a MySQL storage engine.” Not “from MySQL.” It understands the MySQL protocol itself. So from the protocol point of view, the Sphinx search daemon can look just like a MySQL server.

Point Two: Sphinx understands a SQL-like query language. Don’t be fooled. You’re not writing SQL. It just looks like you are.

Point Three: Because of point One and point Two, you can use the mysql command-line client program to talk directly to Sphinx, with absolutely no MySQL server anywhere in sight. This also means you can connect …

Having written about what I think is cool about the upcoming MySQL Conference and the MySQL Camp, now I want to finish up with what I’d like to see at the Percona Performance Conference. Just to recap, this is a conference we created to serve those who want to learn about performance — not “learn about MySQL,” not “learn about database performance,” just learn about performance, period.

I want to see everything. I think this is going to be the single best conference I’ve ever been to. Even the way the conference is organized is exciting. For example, it’s running from early morning till late at night, nonstop. The sessions are also (mostly) only 25 minutes. This means if you decide a session isn’t all that interesting, you didn’t spend much time on it, and you don’t have long to wait for the next one.

So here is a small sample of the …