This is my 10th year attending and speaking at the MySQL Users Conference (as the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo was originally called back in 2003), and for me it does not get tiring. So what is there in this conference for me as an attendee, speaker and businessman?

Learning. First and foremost the conference is still a great learning venue for me. I learn about new technologies in the MySQL space as well as how these technologies can be applied in practice. I learn what works and what does not. I learn from the sessions, expo hall exhibitors and hallway conversations. I’m glad that over so many years the conference is still …

A few weeks ago I wrote about “MySQL Performance at High Concurrency” and why it is important, which was followed up by Vadim’s post on ThreadPool in Percona Server providing some great illustration on the topic. This time I want to target an opposite question: why MySQL performance at low concurrency is important for you.

I decided to write about this topic as a number of recent blog posts and articles look at MySQL performance starting with certain concurrency as the low point. For example, …

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

Percona MySQL University, Toronto is taking place this Friday and I’m very excited about this event because it is a special opportunity to fit a phenomenal number of specific and focused MySQL technical talks all into one day, for free.

Over the course of the day we will cover some of the hottest topics in the MySQL space. There will be talks covering topics like MySQL 5.6, MySQL in the Cloud and High Availability for MySQL, as well as Percona XtraDB Cluster for MySQL. We have talks planned for nearly every …

“MySQL 5.6: Advantages in a Nutshell.” March 6 at 10 a.m. PST with host Peter Zaitsev.

This Wednesday (March 6 at 10 a.m. PST) I’ll be presenting a webinar titled “MySQL 5.6: Advantages in a Nutshell.” In this presentation, I will provide a brief overview of the advantages MySQL 5.6 offers. My focus is a practical one – to identify the conditions in which one or another feature can be successfully used providing significant gain, explicitly or transparently. There has been a lot of pretty cool stuff done in MySQL 5.6 and my goal is to get you excited to learn more and try it out.

Reserve your spot now and join me on Wednesday by …

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 …

MySQL is the first choice for a large majority of web applications thanks to its ease of use and low cost of operation. However, running big apps on MySQL is still a challenge even for experts. In this webinar we show you how to combine Percona Server and Percona XtraBackup with Continuent Tungsten to build business-critical systems capable of processing hundreds of millions of transactions per

Wednesday, 11/28 @ 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET Register at http://www.percona.com/webinars/industrial-strength-mysql-applications-using-percona-and-continuent

MySQL is the first choice for a large majority of web applications thanks to its ease of use and low cost of operation. However, running big apps on MySQL is still a challenge even for experts. In this webinar we will show you how to combine

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance a number of interesting reports were published that examined its role in establishing MariaDB as an alternative development branch for MySQL and as a vendor-neutral open source database collective.

I had a few questions myself, which Monty Widenius and Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona, were good enough to answer for me via email. They also agreed for the exchange to be published here. This is what they had to say:

Q: Monty has stated that the intention is to open up the Alliance to include other open source database projects - any indication of how this would be done given the diverse …

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance some people have assumed that it is only a matter of time before MariaDB becomes the de facto replacement for MySQL.

That assumes that Oracle will allow the development of MySQL to stagnate, either deliberately or through neglect - something that we have expressed our doubts about, but even if that were the case it appears that the GPL (or more to the point MySQL’s dual licensing strategy) may restrict the potential for MariaDB.

Curt Monash recently raised the question of whether closed-source storage engines can be used with MySQL (and, by …

As you probably know, I recently finished writing a book with a few co-authors. I kept notes along the way and wanted to describe the process for those who are thinking about writing a book, too.

Update: see the followup post for more of the story, including my editor’s responses.

I think it’s important to be objective; my purpose here is to help prospective authors get a feeling of what it’s like, and it’s not all good (but I’d encourage people to do it anyway). Hopefully I won’t come off as sounding peeved at anyone or like I’m trying to put people down. I’ll have a lot to say about what went right and wrong, and how it helped and hindered the process.

Please excuse the rambling nature of this post. I’d love to …