For a few years now Proven Scaling has been hosting the MySQL mirror/archive at mirror.provenscaling.com, which provides mainly older MySQL releases (which have been removed from MySQL’s mirror long ago) and MySQL Enterprise releases for the last few years.

Since Proven Scaling has been winding down (and we’ve started paying the bills personally), it doesn’t really make sense for us to maintain as large of a colocation footprint as we have. We’re looking to shift things around, and the mirror is something that’s fairly painful for us to host with a small footprint. We’re hoping another MySQL community member with an already-large datacenter/bandwidth footprint will want to pick it up, where it won’t affect their bottom line so much.

I think there’s still some value in having these files be …

As of today, Proven Scaling has launched an official blog, which we’ll all be writing entries on. Check it out and subscribe!

When Sun acquired MySQL and announced that it would invest the resources necessary to position the open source database for mission-critical deployments, I think everyone assumed that the database would eventually become bigger and heavier.

Few would have predicted that we would also see a project that would make the database smaller and lighter, but that is exactly what Drizzle, a new project from Sun’s MySQL director of architecture Brian Aker, is all about.

Drizzle is taking a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to refactoring MySQL by ripping out much of the additional enterprise functionality that has gone into it since version 4.1 and focusing on the demands of a core set of applications.

As Brian …

Yum is an extremely popular system to download, install, and update RPM-based packages from multiple repositories. Proven Scaling has launched a set of repositories to augment the existing central distributions’ repositories with packages our customers need for deploying MySQL-based systems. We’ve been working on it for a while, and have had many people making use of it. We are providing:

• RPMs of community and enterprise releases of MySQL for RHEL/CentOS, as built by MySQL and distributed on MySQL.com
• RPMs of community tools such as maatkit and innotop and their dependencies. …

A lot of people contact me asking if I’m looking for a job. (I have an unanswered email in my inbox right now.) People are looking desperately for qualified, knowledgeable MySQL professionals. There’s a critical shortage of people who can admin MySQL moderately well, much less at the guru level.

If you are one of the many who are trying to hire a MySQL DBA, you should send your employees to the MySQL Conference and Expo. Not just this year — every year. Train a smart person instead of trying to hire someone who’s ready to go now.

This is the unfortunate reality: MySQL’s popularity has caused demand to far exceed supply. That’s what happens when a great disruptive innovation takes hold.

What do you do in the meantime?

If you just need a little help, hire a part-time DBA and get some consulting help. Without endorsing them directly, may I suggest …

This release of MySQL Toolkit adds a new tool, fixes some minor bugs, and adds new functionality to several of the tools.

For the past few weeks off and on, as part of Proven Scaling’s project to improve the MySQL server, I’ve been helping Joel Seligstein to really dig into the MySQL source code and add some features, in preparation for a much bigger feature coming up (more on that at a future date). He has now finished three smaller projects that have been on Proven Scaling’s and my own to-do list for quite some time: SET CONNECTION STATUS status, KILL connection_id WITH QUERY query_id, and SHOW … FOR CONNECTION connection_id.1

SET CONNECTION STATUS

This patch adds a new SET CONNECTION STATUS status command, which allows each session to set a status which will be shown in a new …

And, the winner is……

Adam Ritter, of Nashville, Tennessee has been selected by Proven Scaling for a free ride to MySQL Camp!

Adam’s enthusiasm and very quick (within the first few hours of my original post), yet courteous and complete entry impressed us. His excitement to learn, and professionalism sealed the deal. Here’s an excerpt from his entry:

My name is Adam Ritter and I’m a recent Computer Science graduate from UT Knoxville. I’m currently looking for a job and I realized that being a DBA is what I want to do. I had started working with MySQL back in a course on Database Design and Management course I took in school. This course started the fire inside of me but unfortunately, it was over all too soon and I was left wanting to learn more. I’ve …

I realized earlier that having the MySQL Camp Free Ride offer open for only 24 hours is a bit harsh, and needlessly short. I’ve extended the deadline to midnight, Friday, October 20 to give everyone a chance.

I’ve also clarified that the offer is open to all, not only to students.

Good luck!

Have you heard of MySQL Camp at Google HQ in Mountain View, California, November 10-12?

Want to go? Can’t go because it’s out in sunny (ha, ha) California, hundreds or thousands of miles/kilometers from where you live?

Maybe you’re a bright student, or maybe you’re currently unemployed, or maybe you’ve got a job, but you just can’t afford to jet out to Mountain View for the weekend. Maybe you contribute code, bug fixes, tools; maybe you run a MySQL Meetup, and just can’t bear the airfare.

Proven Scaling would like to sponsora one such person to attend MySQL Camp! We’ll pay for your airfare and hotel—meals and transportation are on you. If you think you are qualified, you live somewhere in the USA or Canadab and you …