Pythian Group

The Malta MySQL User Group (MMUG) met for the second time this Thursday, and compared to last time, we had a much better venue: Ixaris Systems let us use their board room, so we had all the tools we needed to have a good meeting.

We managed to get a group picture before everyone has arrived, so I guess we can call the people in this picture “early birds”.

Once we all arrived, however, Sandro Gauci from EnableSecurity gave us a very interesting talk on SQL Injection security, and general security flaws from a developer point a view. You can find the slides here: sql-injection.pdf.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Gauci while presenting. (Sorry for the obvious problem with the over-white picture — seems like I forgot to turn down the flash, and this was the only non-blurry shot I got.)

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So, we’re coming up on that time again. When I moved back to Malta in order to work for Pythian one of the things that I wanted to do was to involve myself more in the community. Currently, I’m doing this by trying to keep an active blog with tips and tricks, good standard knowledge, and just overall trying to enlighten people. I’m also doing this by organizing a MySQL User Group here in Malta.

We’re set to have our 2^nd meeting this coming Thursday, the 28^thof August, in Ta’ Xbiex where we have graciously been donated a board room and projector (and parking space, luckily) for use. I’m trying to get one of our members to give a session about security (not only on MySQL, but also on the OS level to secure the process), and I know there is work being done on a presentation on MySQL Cluster, which I personally find very interesting and can’t wait to see.

In this second meeting, we’ll again focus on general best practices and free discussions, in order to share our knowledge as much as we can. The last meeting was in Mellieha and it was a success — we had a good turnout and some very interesting discussions. Darren, one of our members, blogged about our meeting here and so did I in one of my previous posts.

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