Pythian Group

Just the facts:
What: MySQL user community dinner
Who: me, you, and many MySQL community members
When: Monday, April 12th – Meet at 6:30 at the Hyatt Santa Clara or at 7 pm at the restaurant
Where: Pedro’s Restaurant and Cantina – 3935 Freedom Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054
How: Comment on this blog post to add your name to the list of probable attendees

I was sad that last year there was no community dinner, and I missed the one the year before when Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green made an appearance. This year I am determined not to miss it, and so I am calling for a community (pay-your-own-way) dinner on Monday, April 12th, at Pedro’s – a Mexican restaurant that has vegetarian and vegan options. I think Monday is a better time because many folks arrive Sunday evening, or even Monday morning (there are tutorials on Monday, but not everyone attends).
Read the rest of this entry . . .

In light of the official Oracle acquisition of Sun, I dug out a presentation video I realize I never officially shared with either the MySQL or the Oracle community. It’s the presentation I did at the 2008 Oracle Open World conference called, “So, you want to be an Oracle ACE?” and is a good resource for anyone who wants to contribute to anything — not just Oracle or MySQL, though certainly it’s based on my experiences with contributing to MySQL.

Oracle has lots of resources for the community. While I have joked about Oracle calling its conference “Open World”, I have also experience it, and the Oracle community first-hand and second-hand — through professional contacts such as my colleagues at Pythian who work on Oracle databases, and also through personal contacts such as my mother who has been to a few Oracle conferences herself.

Like MySQL, Oracle has recognized community contributors. However, Oracle offers more tangible benefits than a photo opportunity and a physical award. Oracle has the Oracle ACE program, with 2 levels: Oracle ACE and Oracle ACE director.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

For very personal reasons that don’t belong in this article, I decided a few weeks ago that it’s time for me to move on. The year and a half that I worked for Pythian have been a wonderful experience, and this is article is my tribute to this great company.

The MySQL Team

Being able to work side by side with two MySQL experts like Sheeri Cabral and Augusto Bott has been a great experience. I have learned a lot, not only about MySQL, but also about what a great DBA should be like. Both of them are recognized MySQL Community members and regular speakers at the MySQL Users Conference and other events. Sheeri has been named MySQL Community Member of the Year twice in a row. Both are a guarantee of excellent service.

My Predictions For Pythian

Read the rest of this entry . . .

Welcome to week 2 of Blogrotate. It was a short week due to Thanksgiving (Canada) and Columbus Day (US), but the world of IT is always buzzing. So as they say at the race track, pitter-patter, let’s get at ‘er.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Oracle RAC SIG is holding elections for its officers and it’s now time for all RAC SIG members to vote. The voting is closed on 30-Sep so make sure you don’t miss the deadline — go to Oracle RAC SIG web-site and click on “Elections” tab (here is the direct link if it works).

If you are not already a member of Oracle RAC SIG and interested in Oracle RAC technology then you should definitely join — it’s free. As a member of RAC SIG you can enjoy regular webinars about Oracle RAC technology as well as access previous archives. Some time ago, I have done a webinar on RAC connection management and there are many good presenters involved. RAC SIG also active at the conferences and organizes round tables, speaker panels and other events. I’ve been involved into one of the past events — RAC Attack! in Chicago — and also presented RAC session at the last year’s Oracle Open World. I’m doing another RAC presentation at the Open World this year during User Groups Forum on Sunday on behalf of RAC SIG.

RAC SIG keeps growing and engaged into more and more activities. I’ve been involved in RAC SIG activities for a while and now decided it’s a good time to step in more actively so I am running for the Vice President of the RAC SIG this year – I believe I can bring great value and make RAC SIG even more successful. You can find more details at the “Election” page of the Oracle RAC SIG web-site so please have a look and if you think I would be a good candidate (I’m sure you do) — cast your votes appropriately! ;-)

In the wake of Meetup.com changing their sponsorship agreements, Technocation, Inc., an international not-for-profit group, has set up a fund for user group sponsorships. You can use the button below to donate any amount of money in US funds via PayPal:

(all monies sent through that button will be earmarked as a directed donation to the “User Group Fund”. In the interest of not cluttering up this blog post with a Donate button for each currency, you can use PayPal to send funds in *any* currency to “donate@technocation.org”. Just be sure to specify if you want the money to go to specifically to the User Group Fund.*)

Note that meetup.com’s fees are $144 per year ($12 per month).

Four years ago, MySQL and Meetup.com entered into an agreement. I have no idea of the details of this sponsorship, though from reading in between the lines, I believe the sponsorship was an in-kind sponsorship — that is, no money exchanged hands, but there were mutually agreed upon benefits. I have no idea what the benefits to Meetup.com were — publicity or free consulting, perhaps.

What I do know is that Meetup.com is changing the way they are doing sponsorships. Read the rest of this entry . . .

The bad news is that whatever agreement MySQL AB had with Meetup.com has ended. As per the wiki at http://forge.mysql.com/wiki/How_to_create_a_user_group:

MySQL AB has an agreement in place with meetup.com to cover the organizer fees. Simply click at the link at the top of the meetup.com page to request your electronic voucher so you can become an organizer.

Unfortunately, this agreement has ended, so there’s going to have to be a more manual process to get MySQL to sponsor the meetup groups. At its cheapest, a year of meetup.com is $144.

The good news is that Giuseppe and Dups (as well as the local Sun/MySQL folks in Boston who also sponsor the pizza and soda we have) have expressed that they are dedicated to sponsoring these user groups, so nobody has to go around digging for spare change just yet.

Here’s the sad e-mail I received:

from Meetup Support
to sheeri
date Mon, May 4, 2009 at 5:52 PM
subject Greetings from Meetup Support (KMM1797374I15977L0KM)
mailed-by meetup.com

Hello Sheeri,

Thanks for your patience while we looked into this!

I did some research and My SQL will no longer be sponsoring Meetup
Groups. Therefore, you’ll need to purchase a subscription plan in order
to continue hosting the Group on Meetup.com. Sorry about that!
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Do you have_community_features? I do!

SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'have_community_features';
+-------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name           | Value |
+-------------------------+-------+
| have_community_features | YES   |
+-------------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I am pretty sure this is one of those variables that MySQL has put in as an unused placeholder, but for now, it is not even documented as unused (as are table_lock_wait_timeout, http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/server-system-variables.html, and a Google search restricted to the site dev.mysql.com turns up only one match, which is not useful: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adev.mysql.com+have_community_features

I wonder if Read the rest of this entry . . .

Hi folks. I am back for the second in what will eventually be a long line of infrequent updates. Did you miss me?

End of School with Linux

OCLUG (The Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group) is putting on an event called—you guessed it—End of School with Linux. This is happening on April 28, 2009 starting at 11am at the University of Ottawa in the SITE building, room C0136. The purpose of the event is to help people with their Linux systems, install Linux, fix issues, and just generally help out in the community. Your humble blogger will be there, manning the booth from 1200-1600, so come on down. And tell a friend, too.

More details can be found at the CSSA’s page. Click here for a map of the campus.

Also check out the OCLUG home page.

Ubuntu 9.04 Released

Ubuntu 9.04 was released today. I have not yet looked at any reviews of the release candidates, but I am on my way out to pick up some new hardware on which to install it tonight.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

I am thrilled to announce that this year’s MySQL Conference will feature a Community Keynote. This is a keynote speech delivered by a community member (not a Sun employee!) about topics relevant to us.

I am delivering this year’s keynote, entitled “How to be a MySQL Superhero” on Wednesday, April 22nd at 9:45 am Pacific. Details are at http://www.mysqlconf.com/mysql2009/public/schedule/detail/9098. This is a great indication that Sun and O’Reilly are taking community very seriously, and want to make sure that our voices are heard — literally.

I hope that this can be an annual featured keynote, like the “State of the Dolphin.” The thriving community is one of the reasons MySQL is the world’s most popular database.