Pythian Group

Pythian is excited to announce that Heidi Hauver, Pythian’s Director, HR, has been named as one of the recipients of the Ottawa Business Journal’s prestigious Forty Under 40 Award!

The annual awards program recognizes accomplished industry leaders who are under the age of 40. The awards are co-hosted by Ottawa Business Journal and the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. The judges collectively spent approximately 100 hours reviewing and ranking each of the submissions, which were assessed using a 40-point system: 20 points for business achievement, 10 points for expertise and 10 points for community involvement.

A BIG congratulations from all of us, Heidi!

Why this article?

First of all because I had fun digging in the code.

Then, I was reading a lot about the improvements we will have in MySQL 5.6, and of some already present in 5.5.

Most of them are well cover by people for sure more expert then me, so I read and read, but after a while I start to be also curious, and I start to read the code, and do tests.

I start to do comparison between versions, like 5.1 – 5.5. – 5.6

One of the things I was looking to was how the new Purge thread mechanism works and his implications.
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Pythian’s Oracle Apps DBA team recently upgraded a client’s E-Business Suite system to version 12.1.3, bringing them into compliance with Oracle’s baseline support requirements for Release 12.1 nearly one year ahead of deadline. We’d like to tell you a bit about this project — not to toot our own horn (though that’s nice too, we are kinda proud), but because it provides an ideal illustration of the power of the Pythian service delivery model, particularly as it applies to large enterprise-class projects.

By the numbers

The numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, but they set the stage. This massive patching exercise entailed:
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Following a brief list of what I have found more interesting during the last two weeks.

Up to now, April has being a great month for MySQL.

MySQL Conference  – Percona conference 2012

The Percona MySQL 2012 conference, has seen the MySQL community, interact as it was doing many years ago,

re-creating the dynamic and creative environment that allow MySQL to become the most adopted open source database.
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Ah yes, the comfort of being around my second family … the user group and fellow Pythianites. I started my day with a BIG DATA (must be in CAPS please :)) session by the Ian Abramson. I have heard quite a buzz about this topic for some time and the buzz is getting louder. I always love to hear about the multi-terabyte data structures/databases as it reminds me of the first time I went from a 20Mb to a 40Mb hard disk on an 8086. In one of my text books in school, the front of the book said:

If there had been as many advancements in automobile technology in the last 20 years as there have been in computers, one would be able to buy a Rolls Royce for 20 cents and it would last a lifetime.

If only that were true … suffice to say, the amount of data running around the internet and so many corporate web sites.repositories is staggering. As per this URL, an internet minute is made up in part of:

• more than 204 million emails are sent
• Amazon rings up about $83,000 in sales
• around 20 million photos are viewed and 3,000 uploaded on Flickr
• at least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed around the world
• more than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora
• more than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube

And, to quote Ian, this is only the beginning. I heard some unfamiliar buzz words which are now part of my technical appetite to become familiar with. Bravo Ian.

Whilst we all embark on this magical journey called “COLLABORATE”, keep in the back of your mind what this conference is all about. JFK said it, and my take on that is

Ask not what your conference can do for you, but what you can do for your conference …

This event is driven by volunteers … 100% in their spare time; logging hundreds of hours altogether to make your experience as education-centric as possible. I started working conferences in the early 1990′s and have spent many years enjoying the fruits of my labour. It is a powerful way to spend your volunteer time-working alongside others with the single goal of making the event as worthwhile for the attendees as possible.

If there is anything about the show that needs fixing … fix it! Feedback is the life blood of user group events and participation in the delivery of an event is the best way to fix something that may have ticked you off about this and any other event. Apply for the conference committee when the call goes out. As you fill out your session/conference evaluations, ensure you keep in the loop and find out how you can become a volunteer.

I am not going to claim that COLLABORATE12 will be the biggest and best yet! I find that (in my opinion) belittles the successes of the past. They all are/all have been/will be the best. Each show stands on its own as a solid offering of top-notch education in its day. COLLABORATE is about content not glitz and networking not marketing. See you in Vegas … as per that now famous saying about that town … “What you learn in Vegas does NOT stay in Vegas” … or something like that :).

The thirsty attendees at this latest IOUG/OAUG/Quest show are keen. The registration lines were long, but no significant Oracle wait events. The show officially kicks off today but the education has began yesterday. Our very own Alex Gorbachev discussed HA all day in prep for a full week of education sessions. Yury has traveled all the way from Australia and we’re glad he did. COLLABORATE often fights with one of my other passions – NHL playoff hockey. When you look deeper into both of these pastimes, they are remarkably similar:

• Hockey – a hat trick is scoring 3 goals in the same game; at COLLABORATE, it is giving 3 or more presentations, a common occurrence with some of our seasoned and strongest presenters
• Hockey – a 10-minute misconduct is often given out for poor behaviour; at COLLABORATE, going 10 minutes overtime does not lead to a trip to the sin bin, but is frowned upon
• Hockey – boarding is a penalty given to players who launch an opponent inappropriately into the boards surrounding the rink; at COLLABORATE, drop the “a” and the “d” and it becomes boring; something all presenters try not to do to their devoted attendees
• Hockey – tripping is an infraction that involves taking the legs out from underneath an opponent; at COLLABORATE, presenters avoid tripping up their followers by encapsulating an organized, well thought out presentation delivering hard-core education to enhance the knowledge of their conference companions
• Hockey – icing is clearing the puck down the playing surface, crossing the two blue lines on the way down; at COLLABORATE it is what you put on the cake, so to speak, topping off a well-written white paper with a methodical presentation with value to one’s attendees

There are so many Pythianites at COLLABORATE it’s like an epidemic, a good one at that. Some of the biggest names are presenting here, as always … Velikanov, Kutrovsky, Fielding, Zubrivsky, all with the blessing of our leader Paul Vallee not to mention Vanessa who sees value to Pythian with our presence at this tier 1 event.

Adjective:
Involving many carefully arranged parts or details; detailed and complicated in design and planning.
Verb:
Develop or present (a theory, policy, or system) in detail.

COLLABORATE is all about quality and content, presenters elaborating based on their specific areas(s) or expertise. The show may be elaborate, but “show” is secondary to education. A handful of tier 1 shows throughout the calendar year do just that … primary focus is on the user community, the people who live the software from day-to-day. A few facets of technical presentations that have always fascinated me are walking away from a session:

1. with an “I did not know you could do that!” feeling
2. with a solution to a technical issue that has been plaguing me for some time
3. with my understanding of a piece of technology ramped up one or more links in the chain of knowledge acquisition

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The journey to the Hotel in Santa Clara took me something like 16 hours. It was long, arduous and at times despairing, but was it worth it? Absolutely! I made the epic journey with my Pythian (and former Nokia) colleague Andrew Moore, and once at the conference we met up with more members of our Pythian MySQL team; Marco Tusa, Raj Thukral, and Singer Wang. We all ran into former colleagues at the conference, caught up with old friends and made some new friends. The conference this year was buzzing with enthusiasm, learning, and creativity. I’m delighted to say it delivered everything I anticipated and more.
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