I’ve had one session accepted at the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo (which is a good thing since I only submitted one session for nomination).

This year’s session is titled How to be Normal, a Guide for Developers. I decided to return to my old Normalization talk, but lean more towards the practical than the theoretical this year and work on common scenarios faced by developers rather than walk a person through the normal forms like I have previously done.

Here’s the abstract I’ll be sending in to replace the ugly one I submitted with:

At some point in every software project involving a database it becomes necessary for the developers who created (or inherited) the project to step back and take a look at their database. Many projects have a database schema that has evolved over time, with columns added here and tables added …

I will present a session on Testing PHP/MySQL Applications with PHPUnit/DbUnit at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008 that is held April 14-17 2008 in Santa Clara, CA, US.Testing PHP/MySQL Applications with PHPUnit/DbUnit
In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale Web systems. Critical business logic like this needs to work correctly. But how do you ensure that it does? You test it, of course.

To make code testing viable, good tool support is needed. This is where PHPUnit comes into …

Some of the bloggers on Planet MySQL are sharing their proposals for the upcoming 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo. Hereby, I follow their example and give you mine.

The first proposal I submitted is on PHPUnit and will showcase Michael Lively Jr.'s port of DbUnit:

Testing PHP/MySQL Applications with PHPUnit/DbUnit

In the last decade, PHP has developed from a niche language for adding dynamic functionality to small websites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale Web systems. Critical …

This certainly took longer than expected, but here are some pictures that I took during our MySQL Developer Meeting in Heidelberg, Germany last month. Enjoy!

There is a lot of exciting stuff happening inside of MySQL AB. But due to the distributed nature of our company it's hardly possible to get a good overview about what the various teams of our development department are currently working on and what they have achieved since the last time we met.

So one cool new idea for our currently ongoing MySQL Developer Meeting in Heidelberg was to let developers show off their work to each other. They were encouraged to prepare demos, either in the form of slide shows or by running live demonstrations from their laptops. Last Thursday and Saturday we allocated time for these team exhibitions and the exhibitors set up tables in the meeting rooms for others to sit next to them, see the new and cool stuff and chat about it. The non-exhibiting attendees received a sheet of paper where they could collect signatures for each demo point they visited, the one that managed to see the most demos was eligible for …

Better late then never: I've now uploaded a few pics that I've taken during this year's FrOSCon to my gallery. Have fun!
 

I've returned home safely from my trip to St. Augustin, Germany (near to Bonn), where I attended this year's FrOSCon. As last year, it was a very well organized event, kudos and thanks to the conference organizers (who are all volunteers!). The conferece program was packed with good sessions again and the ones I attended were interesting and well done. Many OSS projects also exhibited in the hall way, it was nice to stop by and chat with these folks.

I gave a talk about "Opening the doors (and windows) of the Cathedral - Enabling an architecture of participation around the MySQL Server", which describes the ongoing activity at MySQL to open up the development processes to the Community. Given that I gave this talk for the first time, I think it went very well, at least I did not run out of time The slides are …

Last weekend saw the second installment of the Free and Open Source Software Conference (FrOSCon) in Sankt Augustin. The conference revolved around a rich schedule of talks, highlighting current topics in Free Software and Open Source. Moreover, Open Source projects took the opportunity to organize their own meetings or even their own lineup of events. Just like last year, the PHP usergroups of Dortmund and …

Hmm, long time no post! But I have the perfect excuse: I've actually been on vacation the past two weeks... Now I am back at work and busy trying to make a dent in the mail pile that has accumulated while I was gone. In addition to that, I am assisting with the organization of our MySQL Developer Meeting in Heidelberg, which will take place in September. See Kaj's blog post for more details about it. I am in charge of our community guests and really look forward to meeting most of our internal developers as well as community guests there! This is going to be a fun event.

In addition to that, I am applying the final touches to my upcoming presentation about our ongoing community activities: "Opening the doors (and windows) of the Cathedral", which will be held at the …

OSCON, the Open Source Convention organized by O'Reilly is coming up next week (July 23rd-27th, Portland, OR).

MySQL AB will be present in the exhibition area and we will also be giving some talks:

• Brian Aker: Extending MySQL, Swiss Army Knife Approach
• Kaj Arnö: The MySQL Architecture of Participation
• Mårten Mickos: The Path to IPO …