Well, I announced it a few months ago, and now Sheeri made it happen. The MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2009 will have a MySQL Camp embedded.

What is it? Asked most of the people I know, including many colleagues, some of them worried that I was giving away the company jewels.

For starters, it is not a competitor of the Users Conference. It won't duplicate its contents, nor is a way of sneaking into the main conference without a pass. It is a camp, and if you have attended either one of the previous MySQL Camps or the OpenSQLCamp, you know what I mean.

MySQL Camp is a gathering of MySQL geeks, developers, enthusiasts, …

Well, I announced it a few months ago, and now Sheeri made it happen. The MySQL Users Conference and Expo 2009 will have a MySQL Camp embedded.

What is it? Asked most of the people I know, including many colleagues, some of them worried that I was giving away the company jewels.

For starters, it is not a competitor of the Users Conference. It won't duplicate its contents, nor is a way of sneaking into the main conference without a pass. It is a camp, and if you have attended either one of the previous MySQL Camps or the OpenSQLCamp, you know what I mean.

MySQL Camp is a gathering of MySQL geeks, developers, enthusiasts, …

This Thursday, we're continuing our series of sessions on MySQL performance measuring and improvements with Richard Smith's presentation titled Scalability by Design - Coding for Systems With Large CPU Counts. Richard works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems, so again, expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server.

Richard is based in Australia, so note that this session will take place in the morning (Europe) or evening (APAC), respectively.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. …

About one year ago, 400 MySQL employees were in Orlando, FL, for their company meeting. Their main worry was how to improve the business in view of the inevitable IPO that was coming soon. Nobody knew when, but there was expectation for Mårten Mickos keynote, on January 16, 2008, at 8:00. Possibly, everybody thought, he will announce a date for going public.

And public we went, but not the way we thought.

The evening before, I was among a group of about 25 people who were summoned to Mårten's suite, without a specific reason. At about 10pm, Mårten announced the $1B news, and for many of us there are only fuzzy memories after that. We weren't allowed to leave the suite before signing a NDA, to keep the news quiet until the following day at 8am.

Thus, having slept very little, with conflicting thoughts, I met my co-workers, and I couldn't tell anyone what was about to happen. We lined up for the keynote hall to open, and …

About one year ago, 400 MySQL employees were in Orlando, FL, for their company meeting. Their main worry was how to improve the business in view of the inevitable IPO that was coming soon. Nobody knew when, but there was expectation for Mårten Mickos keynote, on January 16, 2008, at 8:00. Possibly, everybody thought, he will announce a date for going public.

And public we went, but not the way we thought.

The evening before, I was among a group of about 25 people who were summoned to Mårten's suite, without a specific reason. At about 10pm, Mårten announced the $1B news, and for many of us there are only fuzzy memories after that. We weren't allowed to leave the suite before signing a NDA, to keep the news quiet until the following day at 8am.

Thus, having slept very little, with conflicting thoughts, I met my co-workers, and I couldn't tell anyone what was about to happen. We lined up for the keynote hall to open, and …

About one year ago, 400 MySQL employees were in Orlando, FL, for their company meeting. Their main worry was how to improve the business in view of the inevitable IPO that was coming soon. Nobody knew when, but there was expectation for Mårten Mickos keynote, on January 16, 2008, at 8:00. Possibly, everybody thought, he will announce a date for going public.

And public we went, but not the way we thought.

The evening before, I was among a group of about 25 people who were summoned to Mårten's suite, without a specific reason. At about 10pm, Mårten announced the $1B news, and for many of us there are only fuzzy memories after that. We weren't allowed to leave the suite before signing a NDA, to keep the news quiet until the following day at 8am.

Thus, having slept very little, with conflicting thoughts, I met my co-workers, and I couldn't tell anyone what was about to happen. We lined up for the keynote hall to open, and …

There are a couple of bookstores in my neighborhood. They could not be more different from one another.

The first is known to focus on best seller lists, to promote popular books, and use displays and traditional retail techniques to drive business. They seem to do well, year in, year out. The other bookstore is more of a community treasure, beloved by the neighborhood, with a focus on the (thoughtful) insights of their staff. Those insights are delivered via small note cards appended to shelving throughout the store, where books are displayed alphabetically, with library-like neutrality.

The first store is very market focused, changes with the season, and seems to be quite succesful. The latter store, beloved though it may be, struggles to stay in business.

Now you might consider that an awkward …

Happy New Year!

MySQL University sessions are starting again after the winter break. This Thursday, we're beginning with Tim Cook's presentation on low-level locking in mysqld and InnoDB – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Tim works in the Performance and Applications Engineering department at Sun Microsystems. Expect to get some deep insights into the inner workings of the MySQL Server and InnoDB.

Tim's based in California, so note that his session will start rather late for Europeans.

For MySQL University sessions, point your browser to this page. You need a browser with a working Flash plugin. You may …

A while back a Sun engineer posted an article claiming that the best way to scale MySQL is to shard your database in many instances on a single server, each of which runs in threads that individually have low performance. The Sun way has always been to get high throughput with high latency. [...]

Sun Microsystems - Employment

As usual, you can likely ignore the “Menlo Park, CA” part (I haven’t checked though… but am 99% sure).