Archive for September, 2011
Speaking at Percona Live in London this October
Two of my proposals for Percona Live London on October 24-25 have been approved! Yes, I really had to propose them and get them approved like everyone else, although as I’m sure you can imagine, I had a good chance at being accepted :-) Not all of my talks were accepted, though.
I’ll be presenting a half-day tutorial on how to get great results when troubleshooting MySQL problems, and a conference session on how to use TCP packet headers to measure and analyze a surprising variety of aspects of MySQL performance and scalability.
The early-bird pricing discount has been extended until the 28th! And the links in this blog post will enable a special discount code at registration to shave another 40 pounds off the ticket price.
Well done, Postgres Open
I thought that Postgres Open 2011 was very well done. I liked the content, the location, and most especially the atmosphere, which felt much more welcoming than some PostgreSQL conferences I’ve attended. This last point bears repeating: I’d exceeded my tolerance for trash talk about MySQL at other conferences, and this event made me feel valued again. I believe that the leaders and organizers set the tone, so I think that Selena and the committee deserve a lot of credit and thanks for the warm atmosphere.
I see that Selena has already announced that there’ll be a 2012 event, which is great. I intend to support it, and I’ve already marked the date on my calendar.
A few people asked me what instrumentation to support scalability and performance analysis would be valuable inside PostgreSQL. The answer I gave in my talk was somewhat sidestepping the question, in hindsight, and I agreed afterwards to follow up with a blog post about it. I’ll write that when I have a chance.
Oracle commercializes MySQL, sun rises in east
I’ve never objected to someone making money from MySQL. I’ve only expressed disappointment that they weren’t doing it effectively enough. As I have predicted many times, Oracle is good at this. Oracle is the number one reason I didn’t start a new career in some other database a few years ago. Oracle is making MySQL more successful not only for Oracle, but also for the users, the community, and the competition.
I am glad that Oracle is offering more pay-only extensions to the server in a way that creates opportunities for others to do the same, and I look forward to even more of them in the future.
