Using the wonderful bittorrent, I got the CD image in next to no time (in contrast to the Solaris Express image I’m currently downloading via HTTP that’s taking forever).

Boot time in VirtualBox (off the ISO image) was rather quick, usual questions on keyboard layout and desired language (it’d be neater if these were GUI questions… but anyway). The GNOME desktop loaded up, popup window informed me that it had connected to the network. Awesome.

Package manager: opend quickly, using the opensolaris.org repository and it does seem to have a lot of packages… even MySQL 5.0.67 (and 4.0.24). Not 5.1 though, but it is early days (and it was just released as GA the other day).

At least one unusual thing was SUNWgrub and SUNWgrubS (where the S is for source). I assume this is some packaging oddity as I don’t ese other packages like this.

SUNWii wins the odd package name award.

The Time Slider seems …

This Thursday (December 11th), Philip Stoev will talk about the Random Query Generator, a new QA tool that generates pseudo-random queries targeted to exercise a specific part of the server being tested. It then executes those queries to check for crashes or assertions or to compare the results returned from two different servers (two versions, two different storage engines, optimizer flags, etc.). It is also able to execute queries against a replication master, constantly checking that the slave is okay and has not diverged.

Towards the end of the session, Philip will share his desktop and show some live examples. Make sure to adjust your volume in case the MySQL Server will utter agonized sounds.

Note that we'll be using a new session address / Dimdim URL:

Now being back from last week’s trip to Ukraine and this week’s trip to Russia, it’s time for an overview.

MySQL was prominently present at both Sun events, the one in Kiev on 26.11.2008 and the one in Moscow last Tuesday 2.12.2008. It was good to discuss with local Sun guys, and to meet MySQL community people and colleagues in both places.

The two first pictures in this post are from the community event at a university of economy in Moscow.

Like elsewhere, I started in the local language (which, perhaps surprisingly, frequently seems to be Russian also in Ukraine), followed by a “MySQL in the Web Economy” presentation in English.

Russia and Ukraine are interesting places, so I …

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that
for the past decade I've had a love-hate relation ship with Sun.

Sun has done a lot of good things in their open source journey such as MySQL, openOffice , Virtualbox and opensourcing Java. But on the other hand they had troubles with creating really organic opensource.

I've always wondered why a company that bought StarDivision because it was cheaper than buying the MS Office license keeps wasting money on building it's own operating systems, albeit in a pretty open model, but with zero to no relevant community.

Yes I've ranted on their marketing boys and girls when they polluted forums I liked. But no I don't want this to happen. (Slicing up Sun)

However I`m in fear it actually might happen, the funny thing is that I already mentioned the same idea in offline conversations …

The FOSDEM 2009 organizers have been very kind to us this year: in addition to a Developer Room on Sunday, we now also have a project desk (1 table) on both days! Thank you very much! In summary, this means that there will be the following MySQL-related activities:

• We will have a Project Stand (one table) on both days
• On Sunday, we will have a MySQL Developer Room, allowing us to schedule our own track of talks about MySQL and related projects
• I have been invited to give a talk about "MySQL High Availability Solutions" in the main conference track
• I also submitted two proposals for lightning talks ("What's new in MySQL 5.1" and "Why you should use Bazaar for maintaining your OSS …

The FOSDEM 2009 organizers have been very kind to us this year: in addition to a Developer Room on Sunday, we now also have a project desk (1 table) on both days! Thank you very much! In summary, this means that there will be the following MySQL-related activities:

• We will have a Project Stand (one table) on both days
• On Sunday, we will have a MySQL Developer Room, allowing us to schedule our own track of talks about MySQL and related projects
• I have been invited to give a talk about "MySQL High Availability Solutions" in the main conference track
• I also submitted two proposals for lightning talks ("What's new in MySQL 5.1" and "Why you should use Bazaar for maintaining your OSS …

Yesterday (December 4th), Sergey Petrunia gave a presentation on what's new in MySQL Optimizer. Unfortunately, the slides didn't show up in the Dimdim presentation area, which also means that the recorded session only has Sergey's voice but not the slides. (I've filed a bug in Dimdim's issue tracker.) However, Sergey kept referring to slide numbers in his talk, so it should be fairly easy (just not as convenient as usual) to follow his recorded presentation.

The slides, together with links to the recording and the chat transcript, can be found on the MySQL University session page.

Next week …

Recently, MySQL introduced the MySQL Query Analyzer tool, which can help DBAs resolve performance problems in their SQL code.  The tool monitors query performance and shows SQL code that is causing a slow down without relying on the slow query log.  DBAs can take this information and use it to further tune their environment to achieve better performance.  You can watch a small demo here to see the product.  Note that the Query Analyzer tool is available with MySQL Enterprise.  A trial version of MySQL Enterprise can be downloaded for 30 days at http://www.mysql.com/trials/.