Colin Charles Agenda

I arrived earlier in the afternoon (on my second Friday now), and was waiting in the shuttle, for apparently another colleague. Twiddling thumbs, getting bored, and just when half an hour passes by, I think of the advice Stewart gave me, saying that the shuttle service was a little dodgy. Suddenly, I see a “familiar” face – its Lenz Grimmer, my colleague that I’ve been working with for ages. I say familiar, because all I’ve seen are photos, and made contact regularly via conference calls, IRC, and email. We met face to face, for the first time, just today.

Amazing, working in a distributed environment, no?

All that aside, Jay, Lenz and I couldn’t resist catching up by the poolside. Dinner ensued at Nicolino’s Italian restaurant in Sunnyvale, located a sweet walking distance from the Hyatt. No side-paths for walking, which I find to be surprising (you can cross streets with pedestrian crossing buttons, but parts of the streets just lose a sidewalk!)

Trying to sleep, and get some rest now for an early morning, but the 1,500 kids that are staying at the Hyatt are ruining my efforts. Knocking on doors, ringing my phone, screaming, running about, and apparently I have a view of the pool, and both the hot tub and pool are swarming with kids. Our future leaders are having a good time, it seems.

MySQL Forge has been recently worked on. The Wiki got updated, there are some new extensions sitting around, and its “secure” as MediaWiki can get. The Forge itself has a nice little MySQL Conference & Expo banner, kudos to Lenz. Incidentally, register now, already. MediaWiki doesn’t have great banner support, so you’ve actually got to go in and hack on the PHP to display banners (MediaWiki:Sidebar itself, doesn’t support image loading! Then how do you link to an image?).

Been doing so much other stuff at MySQL recently, its a bit refershing to work on Forge. We’re safely off the 1.6 branch, and single sign on should be a goal next.

From the Google Summer of Code point of view, we’ve got a firmed up “wanting to accept” eight students, possibly. If Google will give us that much. Interesting stuff, with auditing software, IPv6 support, benchmarking (i.e. load testing), an Atom store, test suite, anti-profiler, keyword search in MySQL applications. We’ve got some amazing mentors – including Jim Starkey.

Technorati Tags: mysql, mysql forge, forge, mediawiki, summer of code, google summer of code, gsoc

Its interesting to note some happenings in the MySQL world of late, that might be of interest to people in the database world, and those following open source software development and business models.

40% of developers say they use MySQL, according to the Evans Data Group. This is not including pilot projects, but real production use in corporate environments. A lot of MySQL’s popularity is generally attributed to the LAMP stack, though I see a change. Look at all the Ruby on Rails projects out there. They most definitely run on a MySQL backend. A good example are the products from 37signals, makers of the rather new, and cool tool, Highrise – they’re Ruby on Rails, and MySQL powered.

Is this 40% statistic prevelant to customers moving away from closed-sourced databases, or the traditional behemoths? I’m not privy to say (in fact, I generally don’t know how many migrations to MySQL there are), but I’m of the understanding that MySQL is probably hitting new markets, with all these web-based companies these days (ahem, Web 2.0 if you must). There are probably a large amount of migrations, but not significant enough to be a whopping large portion of the 40%.

Then, via James Governor: MySQL signs its first ever $1m+ deal. Keywords to take away include European telco, EUR$1m+, and helping the IPO momentum. This is obviously not something that there have been press releases about (yet?), but its great news, especially since its the first ever. This clearly gives the database some real bragging rights, I think. While MySQL’s planned IPO is not the first OSS IPO, its been quite a while since we last had one. Probably first open source database to IPO. And now, with a very large customer, this clearly rocks!

Technorati Tags: mysql, developers, production, lamp, ruby, RoR, ruby on rails, $1 million, million dollar, million dollar deal, european telco, IPO

We had about a 70% increase in applications for the Google Summer of Code, in the last 24-hours. This prompted me to post to the summer-discuss list, pimping some new projects. We’re rocking in getting external mentors, for projects that will benefit the community:

• I already pimped Sheeri a few days ago, and she’s got the MySQL Auditing Software up her sleeve
• We’ve also got Paul McCullagh (of PBXT storage engine fame), wanting The “anti-profiler” – a performance analysis tool for database engines

Now comes the interesting task of separating the wheat from the chaff. We prefer applications that are specific (don’t send an application saying you’ll work on anything – thats not a strong application, at all). Check your feedback. We can’t be emailing all of you individually and tying that in with the Google web-app, as well.

In case anyone’s wondering why the Friday->Saturday has given us a 70% increase in applications, I’m pretty certain its the idea behind college kids liking to procrastinate and leaving things to the last minute. Guess this is going to make my weekend, interesting.

Technorati Tags: google summer of code, gsoc, summer of code, learn, code, mysql, auditing, profiling, performance analysis, performance

Well, that’s right. Student applications close this Saturday, the 24th, so I’d be right in saying its mid-week, so get your applications coming in for the Google Summer of Code.

To be a bit of a tease, MySQL has actually upped the amount of projects that we think students can accomplish, by adding a brand new section on Replication and Backup Development. Everyone talks about backing up, and this is an excellent way for a student to get inspired by doing something seriously important!

Sheeri Kritzer, long time MySQL DBA and prolific Planet MySQL author, has also decided that she’s going to mentor MySQL Auditing Software. While this is not something that will make the main tree (i.e. its not part of the server), it is excellent to be another project all by itself. More supporting MySQL-based software, is a good thing. And it truly shows that MySQL is working alongside the community!

Well, thats all. I’ll go back to fielding your questions and stuff. Its amazing to note that being a project administrator isn’t exactly the easiest task. When Google tell you, you’ll be needing a lot of time, they’re right.

Technorati Tags: google summer of code, gsoc, summer of code, learn, code, mysql, replication, backup, auditing

Today’s been interesting. Its labour day here in Melbourne, so I believe a lot of people are enjoying the long weekend. I on the other hand, have been labouring over the long weekend, and we have stuff to show for it. Via the Forge Wiki:

• Google Summer of Code 2007 – we’ve applied, we’ve identified mentors, and we’ve also identified some project ideas. Last week was rather busy sorting all this out. My boss, Kaj explains it a lot better in his post, Global Warming & Google Summer of Code. Students, do apply to come code with us!
  Keep the March 14 – 24, 2007 dates (Cupertino, California time) in your mind students… Thats when the Google SoC opens up. Of course, come March 14 we also certainly hope to be a mentoring organization, with the sole purpose of making MySQL rock! With regards to the wiki page, there’s information on a lot of bugs – we’re doing this so we open the board up a little, as well. We try to be specific, but we also try to be really open about the whole thing so students can cherry pick what interests them.
• Thanks to Stefan Hinz, our Documentation lead, we have now opened up MySQL University. This is the Engineering Training Program, so why not come learn with us?
  This is still a work in progress, and we’re migrating content (there’s not much yet, so thats a good thing). In the near future, since we’re working out the kinks, this should all be run on freenode as well. In the meantime, go learn about the mysys library & algorithms. Those times are probably when MySQL University will be held, so keep them free in your relevant timezone :P

Technorati Tags: mysql university, google summer of code, gsoc, summer of code, learn, code