I’ve been woefully neglectful of my responsibilities to post regularly about Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013 (PLCME 2013), but here’s some highlights of what I am planning to attend from the schedule.  Read to the very bottom for the chance to win a free full pass to the conference!

When picking talks to attend, I typically try to balance sessions that will fill in gaps in my knowledge (especially with topics that have come up repeatedly) with sessions on topics that I already specialize in to gain more depth.  Once I’m at a conference, I often will change my plans at the last minute, but here’s what I’d choose today:

Tutorial Day

I’m giving my own all-day tutorial on …

The deadline is fast approaching to submit proposals for the Birds of a Feather Sessions (BOFs) and the Lightning Talks (presented during the Wednesday Evening Networking Reception) for the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo 2013. Applications for the DotOrg Pavilion close soon as well. The deadline is February 24th for all three opportunities so submit your proposals now!

Lightning Talks are 5-minute presentations focusing on one key point in the MySQL world, technical or not. Lighthearted, fun or otherwise entertaining submissions are highly welcome. They might include a new …

On Friday, February 15, 2013 10:00am Pacific Standard Time, I will be delivering a webinar entitled “Building a highly scaleable distributed row, document or column store with MySQL and Shard-Query”

The first part of this webinar will focus on why distributed databases are needed, and on the techniques employed by Shard-Query to implement a distributed MySQL database. The focus will then proceed to the types of distributed (massively parallel processing) database applications which can be deployed with Shard-Query and the performance aspects of each.

The following types of implementations will be described:

• Distributed row store using XtraDB cluster
• Distributed append-only column store …

Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev leads a track at the inaugural Percona MySQL University event in Raleigh, N.C. on Jan. 29, 2013.

Thank you to everyone who attended Percona MySQL University in Raleigh, N.C. We had a great turnout and a lot of positive feedback!

What’s next for Percona MySQL University? Next week we’re going to hold events in Montevideo and Buenos Aires which are gathering significant local interest!

In March we’re focusing on Toronto – We’ll be having a team meeting and …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraDB Cluster on January 30th, 2013. Binaries are available from downloads area or from our software repositories.

Bugs fixed:

• In some cases when node is recovered variable threads_running would become huge. Bug fixed #1040108 (Teemu Ollakka).
• Variable wsrep_defaults_file would be set up to the value in the last configuration file read. Bug fixed by keeping the value found in the top configuration file. Bug fixed …

Following our Percona MySQL University event in Raleigh,NC Percona MySQL University comes to South America! We’ll have a Full day FREE MySQL Technical Educational events in Montevideo on February 5th, 2013 and Buenos Aires on February 7th.

I’m very excited to bring these events to MySQL Community in Uruguay and Argentina. This is my first trip to South America and it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun!

With Percona MySQL University events, we focus on MySQL Education for broad group of users. We’ve specially prepared talks that will be interesting for people just starting with MySQL to experienced MySQL developers and DBAs. So …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.1.67-14.3 on January 23rd, 2013 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories).

Based on MySQL 5.1.67, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.1.67-14.3 is now the current stable release in the 5.1 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can be found in the 5.1.67-14.3 milestone at Launchpad.

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona Server 5.5.29-29.4 on January 23rd, 2012 (Downloads are available here and from the Percona Software Repositories).

Based on MySQL 5.5.29, including all the bug fixes in it, Percona Server 5.5.29-29.4 is now the current stable release in the 5.5 series. All of Percona‘s software is open-source and free, all the details of the release can be found in the 5.5.29-29.4 milestone at Launchpad.

Bugs Fixed:

• Fixed …

Today I gave a presentation on “Read/Write Splitting with PHP” for Percona Webinars.  If you missed it, you can still register to view the recording and my slides.

Thanks to everyone who attended, and especially to folks who asked the great questions.  I answered as many as I could during the session, but here are all the questions with my complete answers:

Q: I wasn’t able to start up the webinar until it was 20 minutes in progress. Is it possible to get a recording once it is over?

A: Yes, we will email a link to all webinar attendees with a recording of the webinar and a link to the slides within 24 hours.  Folks who did not attend the webinar can also visit the webinar …

Percona is glad to announce the release of Percona XtraBackup 2.0.5 on January 23rd, 2012. Downloads are available from our download site here and Percona Software Repositories.

This release is the current GA (Generally Available) stable release in the 2.0 series.

New Features:

• New option --defaults-extra-file has been introduced. This option specifies from what extra file to read the default MySQL options before the standard defaults-file. It can be used to load the user/password combination for the dedicated backup user from a separate configuration file, to avoid storing it in the crontab or a script somewhere in the system.

Bugs Fixed:

• In case of …