Colin Charles Agenda

I miss a proper database related newsletter for busy people. There’s so much happening in the space, from tech, to licensing, and even usage. Anyway, quick tab sweep.

Paul Vallée (of Pythian fame) has been working on Tehama for sometime, and now he gets to do it full time as a PE firm, bought control of Pythian’s services business. Pythian has more than 350 employees, and 250 customers, and raised capital before. More at Ottawa’s Pythian spins out software platform Tehama.

Database leaks data on most of Ecuador’s citizens, including 6.7 million children – ElasticSearch.

Percona has launched Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL 11. This means they have servers for MySQL, MongoDB, and now PostgreSQL. Looks very much like a packaged server with tools from 3rd parties (source).

Severalnines has launched Backup Ninja, an agent-based SaaS service to backup popular databases in the cloud. Backup.Ninja (cool URL) supports MySQL (and variants), MongoDB, PostgreSQL and TimeScale. No pricing available, but it is free for 30 days.

Comparing Database Types: How Database Types Evolved to Meet Different Needs

New In PostgreSQL 12: Generated Columns – anyone doing a comparison with MariaDB Server or MySQL?

Migration Complete — Amazon’s Consumer Business Just Turned off its Final Oracle Database – a huge deal as they migrated 75 petabytes of internal data to DynamoDB, Aurora, RDS and Redshift. Amazon, powered by AWS, and a big win for open source (a lot of these services are built-on open source).

MongoDB and Alibaba Cloud Launch New Partnership – I see this as a win for the SSPL relicense. It is far too costly to maintain a drop-in compatible fork, in a single company (Hi Amazon DocumentDB!). Maybe if the PostgreSQL layer gets open sourced, there is a chance, but otherwise, all good news for Alibaba and MongoDB.

MySQL 8.0.18 brings hash join, EXPLAIN ANALYZE, and more interestingly, HashiCorp Vault support for MySQL Keyring. (Percona has an open source variant).

I’ve always enjoyed the Percona Live Europe events, because I consider them to be a lot more intimate than the event in Santa Clara. It started in London, had a smashing success last year in Amsterdam (conference sold out), and by design the travelling conference is now in Dublin from September 25-27 2017.

So what are you waiting for when it comes to submitting to Percona Live Europe Dublin 2017? Call for presentations close on July 17 2017, the conference has a pretty diverse topic structure (MySQL [and its diverse ecosystem including MariaDB Server naturally], MongoDB and other open source databases including PostgreSQL, time series stores, and more).

And I think we also have a pretty diverse conference committee in terms of expertise. You can also register now. Early bird registration ends August 8 2017.

I look forward to seeing you in Dublin, so we can share a pint of Guinness. Sláinte.

At Percona Live Amsterdam recently, the conference expanded beyond just its focus areas of MySQL & its ecosystem and MongoDB to also include PostgreSQL and other open source databases (just look at the recent poll). The event was a sold out success.

This will continue for Percona Live Santa Clara 2017, happening April 24-27 2017 – and the call for papers is open till November 13 2016, so what are you waiting for? Submit already!

I am on the conference committee and am looking forward to making the best program possible. Looking forward to your submissions!

I have a few upcoming speaking engagements in June 2016:

• Nerdear.la – June 9-10 2016 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – never been to this event but MariaDB Corporation are sponsors and I’m quite excited to be back in Buenos Aires. I’m going to talk about the MySQL ecosystem in 2016.
• SouthEast LinuxFest – June 10-12 2016 – Charlotte, NC, USA – I have a few talks here, a bit bummed that I’m going to be missing the speaker dinner, but I expect this to be another great year. Learn about MariaDB Server/MySQL Security Essentials, the MySQL ecosystem in 2016, and about distributions from the view of a package.
• NYC MySQL Meetup – June 27 2016 – New York, USA – I’m going to give a talk on lessons you can learn from other people’s database failures. I did this at rootconf.in, and it was well received so I’m quite excited to give this again.
• Community Open House for MongoDB – June 30 2016 – New York, USA – I’m going to give my first MongoDB talk at the Community Open House for MongoDB – My First Moments with MongoDB, from the view of someone who’s been using MySQL for a very long time.

So if you’re in Buenos Aires, Charlotte or New York, I’m looking forward to seeing you to talk all things databases and open source.

Rob Young is back in the MySQL ecosystem (now working at Percona), but he was previously at MongoDB (formerly known as 10gen), and he made a really interesting observation:

10gen places a huge importance on all employees having a working technical knowledge of its products. 

I joined 10gen with years of application and database development experience, mostly using relational models. While most concepts apply to a document-oriented model there are enough technical differences that leave me as a complete novice when it comes to specific MongoDB details and its practical use cases. I have spent my first month in a series of self-guided and instructor led technical training sessions and a practical, real-world bootcamp that have proven to be a welcome quickstart to my understanding and working with the technology. This will pay great dividends as I get more overwhelmed with my true PM duties.

I cannot agree more with this stand that MongoDB takes. All employees should have a working technical knowledge of the products that the company makes. 

I remember back in MySQL AB, it was a requirement that support engineers spent their first 3 months on support requests but were also required to get certified during that timeframe. That’s fine and dandy when you have a certification program that you’re selling ;)

I think its important for everyone to know what their products do, instead of just the engineering/consulting/sales engineering teams. It is important for the executive team to know what products they really offer. It is important for the sales team to go beyond what they are given in product brochures. It is important for the marketing team to know what they’re marketing (else they just spout garbage that no one listens to).

Kudos MongoDB for the smarts!

Via Pandodaily (an article you definitely should read):

The company has big plans. 10Gen’s vision is to build a software platform company akin to Redhat or Oracle, Schireson says. “That’s the type of company we want to build,” he says. “Those companies don’t get acquired.” — 10gen President, Max Schireson

I’m glad that this is the vision. This is something I’m very positive about. I hope that this vision is realized for Max & the rest of 10gen. This is a company that has raised five rounds of venture funding ($73 million), currently valued at over $550 million.