Pythian Group

OpenSQLCamp is less than 4 months away, and I have finally gotten around to updating the site. Special thanks go to Bradley Kuzsmaul and the folks at Tokutek for getting the ball rolling and making the reservation at MIT. Using MIT means that we will have *free* reliable wireless guest access and projects.

OpenSQL Camp is a free unconference for people interested in open source databases (MySQL, SQLite, Postgres, Drizzle), including non-relational databases, database alternatives like NoSQL stores, and database tools such as Gearman. We are not focusing on any one project, and hope to see representatives from a variety of open source database projects attend. As usual I am one of the main organizers of Open SQL Camp (in previous years, Baron Schwartz, Selena Deckelmann and Eric Day have been main organizers too; this year Bradley Kuzsmaul is the other main organizer). The target audience are users and developers, but others are encouraged to attend too. There will be both presentations and hackathons, with plenty of opportunities to learn, contribute, and collaborate!

I have updated the main Boston 2010 page at http://opensqlcamp.org/Events/Boston2010/ with travel and logistics information, including links to:
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Here’s a sneak peek at a video matrix — this is all the videos that include Pythian Group employees at the MySQL conference. I hope to have all the rest of the videos processed and uploaded within 24 hours, with a matrix similar to the one below (but of course with many more sessions).

This is the 182nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Make sure to read the whole edition so you do not miss where to submit your SQL limerick!

This week started out with me posting about International Women’s Day, and has me personally attending Confoo (Montreal) which is an excellent conference I hope to return to next year. I learned a lot from confoo, especially the blending nosql and sql session I attended.

This week was also the Hotsos Symposium. Doug’s Oracle Blog has a series of posts about Hotsos. If all this talk about conferences has gotten you excited, Joshua Drake notes that 14 days and the hotel is almost full for postgresql conference east which is March 25th-28th in Philadelphia. And the Oracle database insider notes that the Oracle OpenWorld call for papers is now open.

According to Susan Visser this week (ending tomorrow) is also read an e-book week. So if you have not already done so, read an e-book! She links a coupon for an e-book in the post.
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I am writing because Sheeri sent me a note about a blog post written by Brian Aker, where Brian concludes, quite correctly, that (in Sheeri’s words not Brian’s)


MySQL is now just a branch (the official branch,
but a branch nonetheless, and a bunch of trademark (logo) and
copyright (docs) ownerships).


This is exactly true. No denying it. Why bother. It’s true. It’s also true for the vast majority of open-source projects, by the way.

I replied to Sheeri:


There's no denying that. The product direction will be set by whoever sets the best product management strategy backed by the most effective development effort. And there can be multiple winners.
-Paul


Well, this is the kind of quality output I can be relied on. It might not fit on twitter, but it’s not blogworthy. Sheeri’s word of encouragement:


See, now that would be a nice blog post with a positive outlook that
both Oracle Corp and MySQL community would agree and be happy with,
because both Oracle Corp and the MySQL community feel they can set
"the best product management strategy backed by the most effective
development effort."
-Sheeri


God. My reply was embarassing but maybe I should include it for humour value:


Go for it. Its a tweet for me at the most. No time to expand that thinking into a blog worthy of the blog today.
-Paul


and then, right away,


ah censored it i'll do it.
it'll be short.
-paul


You are now reading the result of this very modest effort.

Here’s the future of MySQL, Drizzle, Monty Program, the Percona fork, etc.

The best product management strategies… should we be lightweight for the web, plug-in oriented like Drizzle? Should we follow Monty’s giant-killing roadmap? Should we focus on performance-oriented patches? The best product management strategies will win.

They can’t win alone. Will they be backed by appropriate investments from effective developers? Effective developers are the ones who convert winning product management strategies into working products. You can’t get there without them and I’ve seen lots of great strategies fail that test (including my own actually).

And there can be more than one winner.

It’s doesn’t matter what roadmap Oracle plots for MySQL. If it’s not the roadmap the community wants, it will lose ground and open an opportunity for another fork. If it is, however, (and NEVER, NEVER underestimate Oracle’s product management because it is outstanding and a big component of their historical success), if it is, however, Oracle can win the long-term hearts and minds, because they can resource quality developers in a way that I don’t think any of the competing forks are capitalized to do (yet.)

Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch.

And more than one player can win.

And regardless, the community wins. Big time.

OpenSQLCamp was a huge success! I took videos of most of the sessions (we only had 3 video cameras, and 4 rooms, and 2 sessions were not recorded). Unfortunately, I was busy doing administrative stuff for opensqlcamp for the opening keynote and first 15 minutes of the session organizing, and when I got to the planning board, it was already full….so I was not able to give a session.

• Comparing Non-Relational Databases: MongoDB, Tokyo Tyrant, CouchDB by Igal Koshevoy of Pragmaticraft
• Drizzle Client Rewrite – Clark Boylan leads the requirements and design discussion for rewriting the Drizzle Client
• Drizzle Plugin Hacking
• Drizzle is Not MySQL with Changes – Brian Aker gives a talk on Drizzle, and how Drizzle is not MySQL.
• Fractal Trees – by Bradley Kuszmaul of Tokutek
• Geographic Operators in SQL (PostGIS) by Webb Sprague
• Goal-Driven Performance – Peter Zaitsev speaks about how to achieve goal-driven performance.
• Graph Engine for MySQL – by Antony Curtis
• Intro to Cassandra
• An Intro to CouchDB: What caught Ubuntu’s eye by Mike Miller (Cloudant)
• Maria – MySQL founder Monty Widenius talks about Maria, and the past, present and future of MySQL.

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Another video from the recent OpenSQLCamp in Portland, Oregon….Earlier today I uploaded the Lightning Talk Videos. Due to the holiday I am unsure when the rest of the videos will be ready. When they are, I will do one blog post featuring them all.

However, I have had several requests for this specific video, so here is Brian Aker speaking about Drizzle.

The slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/brianaker/drizzle-opensql-camp, and here’s the video:
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It’s been just over three months since the April 2009 MySQL Users Conference and Expo. It took a while for the files to be processed, and then uploaded to www.technocation.org, and then I found out that the online streaming was not working properly. So I started playing with things, re-encoding some videos, updating the software, but to no avail.

Just as I was about to give up I got notification that Technocation, Inc. was accepted into YouTube‘s not-for-profit program, which allows movies larger than 10 minutes to be uploaded and viewed advertisement-free.

So then I had to upload the videos to YouTube and add descriptions.

So with no *further* delay, here are all the videos from the 2009 MySQL Conference and 2009 MySQL Camp:

The brief description — just the playlists:
Conference playlist (16 videos):
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0F93B7A29807C4F7

Camp playlist (6 videos):
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5EE4B7EC2F257251

The longer description – each video with title, presenter(s) and link:
MySQL Camp:
Keynote: The State of Open Source Databases
Brian Aker (Sun Microsystems)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2V-hvD_icA

Read the rest of this entry . . .

At the July MySQL User Group, Eric Day and Patrick Galbraith spoke about Drizzle, a lightweight, microkernel, open source database for high-performance scale-out applications, and Gearman, an open source, distributed job queuing system.

The slides can be downloaded from http://www.oddments.org/notes/DrizzleGearmanBoston2009.pdf.

The first hour of video, where Eric and Patrick talk about Drizzle, is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4cGzFlcuU, and below:
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The July meeting of the Boston MySQL User Group will feature Eric Day, a prominent Drizzle developer, talking about Drizzle and Gearman:

In this talk we will discuss two growing technologies: Drizzle and Gearman.

We will explain what the Drizzle project is, what we aim to accomplish, and an overview of where we are at. We will also be introducing the fundamentals of how to leverage Gearman, an open-source, distributed job queuing system. Gearman’s generic design allows it to be used as a building block for almost any use – from speeding up your website to building your own Map/Reduce cluster. We will tie Drizzle and Gearman together and demonstrate how they work in a custom Search Engine application.

————————

Here is the URL for MIT’s Map with the location of this building:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=E51&Buildings=go

This map shows the MBTA Kendall Stop:
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=L5&Landmarks=go
(the stop is in red on that map, and you can see E51 in the bottom right)

Here are the URL’s for the parking lots (free and open to the public after 3 pm):
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=P4&Parking=go
http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?selection=P5&Parking=go

Free pizza and soda will be served, so please RSVP accurately.

To RSVP anonymously, please login to the Meetup site with the e-mail address “admin at sheeri dot com” and the password “guest”.

For more information, see: http://mysql.meetup.com/137/

This is the 150th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Someone accidentally left Dave Edwards’ cage unlocked, and he escaped, thus leaving me with the pleasurable duty of compiling the 150th weekly Log Buffer.

Many people other than Dave are finding release this week. Read the rest of this entry . . .