I took a 1-hour long session (was supposed to be 2 hours, but my planned agenda was exhausted) for students of engineering colleges across Karnataka studying in colleges under VTU. The session was delivered via EDUSAT under the Sun Microsystems- VTU EDUSAT e-learning programme.

It was fun. However, the fact that there was no interaction with the students felt a little dumb. (I was speaking on the camera which was beamed live)

These are my slides:

• http://blogs.sun.com/amitsaha/resource/MySQL/MySQL-Intro-features-benefits.pdf

I also put together a short Quiz for them:

• …

I took a 1-hour long session (was supposed to be 2 hours, but my planned agenda was exhausted) for students of engineering colleges across Karnataka studying in colleges under VTU. The session was delivered via EDUSAT under the Sun Microsystems- VTU EDUSAT e-learning programme.

It was fun. However, the fact that there was no interaction with the students felt a little dumb. (I was speaking on the camera which was beamed live)

These are my slides:

• http://blogs.sun.com/amitsaha/resource/MySQL/MySQL-Intro-features-benefits.pdf

I also put together a short Quiz for them:

• …

This Thursday (November 13, 2008), Martin "MC" Brown will give an overview of MySQL on openSolaris. MC is an expert on MySQL and Solaris, and has helped the openSolaris team to port MySQL to that platform. The session will start at 14:00 UTC/BST (15:00 CET).

For those of you who've never heard the term before, MySQL University is an educational program for engineers from Sun/MySQL and the MySQL community. It's free and open to anyone. MySQL University focuses on MySQL internals and on Sun technology that can be used in connection with MySQL.

Here's the updated schedule for the rest of this year. Note that 14:00 BST currently translates to 14:00 UTC – sorry for getting this wrong with the last announcement. As always, check out the …

One of the things that I've been wanting to do is build MySQL.  I checked out this blog from Neel and the instructions posted on the MySQL site and it looked fairly straightforward.  After going through the steps, I can say that it proved to be quite simple.  Note that I built the latest rc candidate of MySQL on OpenSolaris using Sun's compilers.  Here are the steps for people who are interested.

1. Install OpenSolaris.  I already have OpenSolaris 2008.05 running within VirtualBox on my laptop.  If you need the ISO image, it can be downloaded from …

The bursting of the internet bubble was good for the computer industry.

Many of us didn't like the medicine, but I can't remember a single customer upset at the idea of paying $20,000 for computing infrastructure that used to cost them $100,000. The price compression came from open source software, and a move toward general purpose servers, and resulted in companies formerly making 65% gross profit on products (Sun among them) facing a new reality.

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Since then, Sun's built the biggest open source software business around (see this report for details), from platform software to application infrastructure (even a …

Out of loyalty to someone I respect, I have chosen to withdraw my post about honesty that appeared at this address.

Let me however take this opportunity to remind my dear MySQL customers and users: I warmly recommend you consult an experienced MySQL expert when architecting your MySQL solutions. Setup a call with a Sales Engineer, hire a consultant, read the blogs of MySQL AB oldtimers. If you have a hard time finding solid MySQL info, we are there to help you.

Last week I found out about the Open Source Economy Conference 2008 held in Putrajaya, Malaysia on the 19th of November 2008. Its co-organised by Sun and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC). Its also the “launch” of MySQL in Malaysia.

I only mention this because I’m speaking - check the agenda out. Don’t hesitate to register now.

FYI, Sun is announcing some sweet new storage stuff on Monday at 3:30pm PT.

I’m reviewing a few of the things they’re announcing, and hope to publish my thoughts here soon (one of them joins my production network tonight if all goes well). However, I’m at Disneyland with my kids (first trip!) from Monday through Thursday, so I don’t know (yet) when I’ll be able to write them up. Bear with me if it takes a few days.

But the gear is exciting, and the direction Sun is headed is even more exciting!

…

We'll talk about MySQL Sandbox, and about any relevant MySQL topic.