This is the first in a series of posts on MySQL® for those new to the database, or those migrating from another DBMS.

So you've made the decision to try MySQL.  Now you just have to get it installed. Luckily for most purposes MySQL is quite often already available.  If you have a Linux installation then chances are that both the server and client are installed.  If you are planning on using MySQL for your website, chances are the hosting provider gives you several MySQL databases for your use.

Before diving in too deep though, let's get some background and terminology out of the way.

What is MySQL?

This depends.  MySQL was a company, is a trademark, is an ecosystem and is the name of arguably the most popular relational database management system (RDBMS) on the planet.  Originally developed by MySQL AB, MySQL (both the database and the trademark) are now owned by Oracle Corporation. But …

A friend recently bought a GM car. I proceeded to inform him that I am shorting GM stock (technically a put option). He was shocked. “But they make great cars,” he exclaimed. I responded, “I’m not shorting the cars, I’m shorting the company.” Why am I recounting this exchange? Because I believe that the new wave of NoSQL companies—as opposed to the rebranded ODBMS—presents the same situation. I am long the products, but short the companies.
Let me explain. NoSQL companies have built some very cool products that solve real business problems. The challenge is that they are all open source products serving niche markets. They have customer funnels that are simply too small to sustain the companies given their low conversion/monetization rates.
These companies could certainly be tasty acquisition targets for companies that actually make money. But as standalone companies, sadly, I would short them. On that note, I am off to …

Linuxcon was a celebration of twenty years of Linux. I remember colleagues telling me to try the funny little operating system for PCs instead of a BSD variant, their excitement, and making distro ‘floppies’ for . The time has flown, Linux has become a core infrastructure for IT, and many technologies built upon upon Linux has flourished. But could it be better? At least for the database world, things could be better.

Databases are a ‘full body workout’ for Linux according to Josh Berkus. The CEO of PostgreSQL Experts had a session and a BOF at Linuxcon. The goals of these session was to make Linux developers aware of some of the special problems for databases and to get some hints of what database developers can do to better exploit Linux. Linux is the overwhelming OS choice for both the multi-process databases (PostgreSQL and Oracle) and the …

I will be presenting The Care and Feeding of a MySQL Database for Linux System Administrators at Linuxcon. This is a short talk on what Linux Admins can do to get their MySQL instances performing properly, where to budget your server money, and some other tips to make life easier. It can not turn a good system admin into a good DBA no more than a 40 minute talk on being a Linux Admin will make a DBA a good Linux Admin. But it is a good overview of the subject. And for the sake of the environment, I will be recycling all my old jokes again. So see you Friday, 3:00 in Plaza B in the Hyatt Regency in Vancouver.

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Speaking of conferences, in general, and OpenSQLCamps in particular, there is one a week from now, and I will be speaking! It is organized as a single room track at Froscon, Germany, by Felix Schupp (Blackray/Softmethod) and Volker Oboda (Primebase). The content is mostly a collection of database related talks originally submitted via the main Froscon call for papers. (In other words, unlike many previous camps, the schedule is all set.)

I'm a little excited about this one, because for the first time in my career as speaker I will be giving the keynote. The title of my talk is

How I learned to use SQL and how I learned not to use it

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Percona has announced Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2012. Kudos for their vision and entrepreneurship. I have seen comments praising their commitment to the community and their willingness to filling a void. I have to dot a few i's and cross some t's on this matter.
That was not the only game in town.By the end of June, there were strong clues that O'Reilly was not going to organize a conference. The question of who could fill the void started to pop up. The MySQL Council started exploring the options for a community-driven conference to replace the missing one. The general plan was along the lines of "let's see who is in, and eventually run a conference without the big organizer. If nobody steps up, the IOUG can offer a venue in Las Vegas for an independent MySQL conference". The plan required general …

Dear Kettle users,

Most of you usually use a data integration engine to process data in a batch-oriented way.  Pentaho Data Integration (Kettle) is typically deployed to run monthly, nightly, hourly workloads.  Sometimes folks run micro-batches of work every minute or so.  However, it’s lesser known that our beloved transformation engine can also be used to stream data indefinitely (never ending) from a source to a target.  This sort of data integration is sometimes referred to as being “streaming“, “real-time“, “near real-time“, “continuous” and so on.  Typical examples of situations where you have a never-ending supply of data that needs to be processed the instance it becomes available are JMS (Java Message Service), RDBMS log sniffing, on-line fraud analyses, web or application …

I'm about to take a week off from my new gig as COO at Zendesk and it got me reflecting on the company and my decision to join.  I stayed with MySQL through the Sun acquisition and left when Oracle acquired Sun.  Although I have a lot of respect for Oracle, it seemed to me the only interesting jobs would be those that report directly to Larry Ellison.  So I took some time off to travel, worked as an EIR at Scale Ventures for a few months and began thinking about what I wanted to do next.

I turned down offers from companies and investors to come in and "repeat the MySQL playbook" in Big Data or NoSQL or apps or whatever.  I think Open Source can be a fantastic …

I’ve just sent an email to the Maatkit discussion list to announce a planned change to how Maatkit (and Aspersa) are developed. In short, Percona plans to create a Percona Toolkit of MySQL-related utilities, as a fork of Maatkit and Aspersa. I’m very happy about this change, and I welcome your responses to that thread on the discussion list.

Related posts:

1. Aspersa, a new opensource toolkit
2. Four companies to sponsor Maatkit development
3. How …

The Dallas / Fort Worth Unix User Group asked me to present on Open Source BI tools on July 7th. They meet 7PM at IBM Innovation Center at 13800 Diplomat Drive (see website for details) and will serve pizza! All are welcome, see you there!

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