The very brave soul, was Aaron Bockover, from the Banshee media player fame (via the LugRadio Live USA 2008 weblog). There were a few interesting highlights from these gong-a-thong sessions…
Zumastor
Dan Kegel spoke about the Zumastor Linux Storage Project. Want snapshots and remote replication in your Linux filesystem? This one does just that. From the contributor list, it looks like its all Google engineers hacking on this… Yes, this is better than LVM. No, I haven’t tried it yet.
mod_ndb
J.D. Duncan spoke about mod_ndb. Here are my transcribed notes of the talk.
MySQL Cluster is a database designed to be fault tolerant, on cheap commodity hardware. Write SQL queries, and they access the data from the NDB nodes. A few deficiencies in web applications – 2 tier architecture (from PHP to MySQL), now it becomes a 3-tier architecture (PHP->MySQL->NDB). MySQL 5.0 also limited – no true VARCHARs, and entirely in memory. There are variable linked rows, VARCHARs support, and on disk support in 5.1.
Apache web server, link in mod_ndb in httpd.conf file, write something that looks like a SQL query, then you send a GET/DELETE/POST request to Apache (its a REST API). If its a GET, the data can come out of the database as JSON, XML, etc. From a browser, its as simple as an XMLHTTP request call.
Solomon Chang’s Irish Ballad
Folk at the MySQL Conference 2007 would remember active community member Solomon Chang. In fact, if you’ve read The MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBA Certification Guide, you’d also recognise the name.
Solomon went up on stage to entertain us with an Irish ballad. He used to be involved with an Irish woman, and has got the skills to mimic the accent really well, and make funny tunes. Solomon won a Neuros OSD for his efforts.
Technorati Tags: dan kegel, zumastor, mod_ndb, j.d. duncan, mysql cluster, apache, solomon chang