Welcome to the 186th Edition of Log Buffer. Lots to report this week, so read on…

In Oracle news:

We begin with Gary Myers at the Sydney Oracle Lab who mixes GUI and CLI and shows how to manage your database from EMACS. You have to read a post that starts with: “There is a place of shadow, a place between the dark lands of the command-line interface, and the shining brightness of the GUI. In the days of yore, many dwelled in the shadow lands, but almost all have been attracted to the lights of SQL Developer…”

Tanel Poder gives a step by step tour of his …

Here’s a sneak peek at a video matrix — this is all the videos that include Pythian Group employees at the MySQL conference. I hope to have all the rest of the videos processed and uploaded within 24 hours, with a matrix similar to the one below (but of course with many more sessions).

It’s a busy time of year for Pythian. With many of our team tied up on client engagements, away at MySQL conference this week, and Collaborate 2010 next week, I’m pinch hitting as volunteer editor in helping to pull together this week’s edition of Log Buffer. Enjoy!

MySQL Conference 2010

Big news this week from MySQL Conference as Oracle’s Edward Screven elaborates on Oracle’s plans for MySQL in his opening keynote. Pythian’s Paul Vallee was interviewed by Network World’s John Brodkin, before the conference in anticipation of the session.

Ronald Bradford responds, writing about his …

I’m looking forward to traveling to San Jose for this year’s MySQL Conference. If there’s anything that can trump the drama of conf two years ago, where we observed how Sun would handle its new property, and then the drama of last year, where we observed how Oracle would handle the pending acquisition, it’s going to be the drama around this one — the first MySQLConf since the Oracle/Sun merger has been finalized and approved.

I think there is some finality to the changing of the guard this time, since there aren’t really that many companies that could conceivably swallow up Oracle itself! (Maybe I shouldn’t say that — next thing you know they’ll spin it off heh.) But regardless, I am looking forward to getting to know Edward Screven and getting a sense from the keynote and other communications exactly what he’s planning to … DO … with …

I’m excited to share the news that Oracle ACE program has been extended to cover MySQL community now and Pythian’s Sheeri Cabral has become the very first Oracle ACE Director in MySQL expertize area. It’s a special privilege for me to blog about it because I had a pleasure to nominate Sheeri in the first place. Being an Oracle ACE Director myself and knowing what’s involved, I believed that if Oracle ACE program is extended to MySQL, Sheeri must be the number one candidate.

It’s impossible to overestimate Sheeri’s role in the MySQL community — her advocacy for the technology and commitment to building and supporting the community. She’s been presenting about MySQL …

This is the 184th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. I’ve edited a couple of Log Buffers before, but this is the first time I get to post directly to the Pythian blog. Just one of the many perks of being a Pythian employee ;)

On the Oracle front:

It is always good to start the day with a pop quiz to get the brain into gear: Charles Hooper posted a 3-part series with seemingly innocent True/False questions. He covers sorting, SQL tuning and …

As I already wrote, I will be speaking at the MySQL Conference & Expo in Santa Clara in two weeks and I am excited to be there again. This year's conference is going to be interesting for a number of reasons, but most importantly I think that the schedule looks great! This is going to be a "drinking from the firehose of MySQL knowledge" event. Afterwards, I'll be on parental leave in May and June, so I likely will miss a lot of great conferences – these months are usually quite packed, as our Open Source Events Calendar can confirm. I just received a notice that my talk …

There hasn’t been a blog post for some time now but that does not mean that the MySQL Workbench Team has been lazy – the contrary.

All I can say at this point is that everybody should check out the upcoming Beta release of MySQL Workbench 5.2 and be prepared for something big.

Hint: Please take a look at the screenshots below. Post your speculations as comments to this blog post.

Screen 1:

Screen 2:

Mark Callaghan asks Can a protocol be GPL?, after finding a disturbing comment in a source file: Any re-implementations of this protocol must also be under GPL, unless one has got an license from MySQL AB stating otherwise.
I recall talking with one of the company lawyers about this matter, and he assured me that the GPL can't be used for a protocol, and that's why this notice was dropped from MySQL.com site a few years ago, even before the Sun acquisition.
This is thus an embarrassing piece of ancient history (which will hopefully be removed soon) that has been in our files for long time. For how long?
If we get the source trees from the public bazaar …

I've been working in a fully distributed work environment for almost 8 years now (I joined MySQL AB in April, 2002). Therefore I've been reading Toni Schneider's blog post about the "5 reasons why your company should be distributed" with great interest – he raised several points that I fully agree with and which I covered in my talks about "Working for a virtual company - how we do it at MySQL" at last year's next09 conference (slides, video) and at …