Colin Charles Agenda

Congratulations to the Debian team for releasing Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny on Valentine’s Day. This version comes with MySQL 5.0.51a.

I had been pestering Norbert Tretkowski to see when MySQL 5.1 will move from experimental to main, and he told me once Lenny was released. This is because Debian itself needs to make a library transition from libmysqlclient15 to libmysqlclient16, and every package that links to libmysqlclient will need to rebuild against the new version. It couldn’t be done any earlier, and now that Lenny is released, we should start seeing MySQL 5.1 in Debian/unstable, real soon now.

So, if you’re a Debian user, know that you have 5.0.51a in stable (Lenny), 5.0.75 in unstable, and 5.1.31 in experimental.

I read Tokyo Cabinet: Beyond Key-Value Store today from one of the news sites, and it reminded me of Brian’s hack on Tokyo Cabinet == Tokyo Engine. Looking at TokyoEngine in Brian’s Mercurial repository, there have been no updates in over a year. Is anyone planning on taking up development of this? Tokyo Cabinet looks really interesting, and Brian has already started the enabling of making it a MySQL engine.

I recently found out about the Facebook Lexicon. There’s a FAQ, but in a nutshell, the Lexicon tracks and counts occurrences of words and phrases on Facebook Walls (profile, group, or even event Walls) over time. It doesn’t seem like status messages count, though maybe the new Lexicon might in due time.

Searched for “the flu“, only because I wanted to compare it with what you’d get over Google Flu Trends. Facebook doesn’t have the limitation that it has to be US only – its worldwide.

Then I thought about Twitter search, since lots of people post their updates on life, their feelings, et al – look at the results there, for the flu. Look at the mashup the New York Times built for the Superbowl on Twitter. Are there graphing tools, that track keywords? It might actually be cool.

Lots of new ways to data mine, it seems. Google shares some semblance of raw data. Facebook doesn’t. Twitter has whatever is available, that is limited by its API (what, some 3,200 entries?).

Imagine all this being used to predict flu clusters, or something more close to home, dengue clusters. Or voter turnout (status saying “voted”, even).

A while back, Ted Ts’o asked for a incremental backup solution that used a database. It reminded me of the talk at the 2009 MySQL Conference & Expo, titled Build your own MySQL time machine.

Chuck and Mats will talk about the backup and replication code, and will show off a web interface, that allows you to go back in time, similar to Apple’s Time Machine in Mac OS X. Its a talk that I most certainly want to attend, as an avid Time Machine user.

Register for the MySQL Conference & Expo 2009 before February 16, and you’ll get an early bird discount (saving $200). April 20-23 2009 will be a rocking few days, see you there.

Today Giuseppe pointed me to Hot skills: MySQL 5.1, an article in ComputerWeekly.com.

The takeaway from the Gartner report quoted?

• Gartner published a report titled “The Growing Maturity of Open-Source Database Management Systems” in November 2008, and found that there was a 50% increase from 2007 to 2008 in the usage of open source DBMS’s in production.
• “Gartner says the major open source DBMSs are now available for installation as packages, without involving the source code, and include tools to help support administrators and managers.” I’d like to state that, MySQL has always been available in packaged format, and you don’t need to fudge with the source code if you do not want to. In fact, its available on all your distributions as well.
• “Gartner still has reservations: open source DBMSs should be used “primarily for non-mission-critical applications and those that do not require high availability”. However, they add, “If the technical capabilities of the staff are strong, use of an open-source DBMS in mission-critical environments is possible now”.” I’d like to affirm that its being used in mission critical environments daily, and no one worries otherwise. Customers from Google right to Cisco, Nokia, and more, use MySQL, without hiccups.

The report states that MySQL DBA’s pull in around £30,000 to £40,000 a year. The recommendation for training, is:

Start with Sun’s aptly named “Getting Started with MySQL” and the MySQL tutorial, or search for free independent online tutorials.

I can highly recommend attending a training session (MySQL for Database Administrators or MySQL for Developers), and then focusing on getting certified. Of course, the book on the left, the MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide (MySQL Press) is also invaluable.

Good luck in becoming MySQL certified, and prosper with your hot skill for 2009!

Executive summary: There is now a MySQL Room on FriendFeed, as well as a identi.ca group for mysql. Community members, developers, dabblers, users, etc. should find these extra avenues useful, in addition to the forums, mailing lists, and even the Forge. Join them now!

There has been a recent uptake of Twitter amongst the MySQL community… Early adopters have been around for ages, even (as we’re slowly approaching Twitter’s third birthday).

However, I’ve been noticing that slowly, there’s a little shift of the technical crowd, to identi.ca. I’ve had an account there for a while, but never really use the service much – but they’ve had updates this past week. They have group support now.

To post to the mysql group, just say:

!mysql message

The order doesn’t matter. Just have !mysql, in the body of your message. It reminds me of #hashtags on Twitter.

I don’t know how many pay attention to FriendFeed, but there is also a MySQL Room on FriendFeed. I think its a lot more discussion friendly than identi.ca, and would like to see it used more. We always during the Conference & Expo tend to use IRC, but maybe now, we’ll use FriendFeed. Good archives, good conversation, good tracking (one can use twhirl – an Adobe AIR app), I see it as a big win.

All in all, Twitter seems like the .com boom of the early 90’s, when businesses discovered Usenet, however identi.ca seem like those private lists, where the cool kids from Usenet migrated to.