Xaprb

Now why would I do that, especially when my blog is syndicated through it?

Simple. I’m always trying to cut back on RSS and other “stuff.” Less is more. But don’t worry — I subscribed again. Only this time, I subscribed to my own filtered version of it! I built it via Yahoo! Pipes. And I made it public, so you can subscribe to it too.

Rob Young has posted a few blog entries lately on the MySQL Enterprise monitoring software. His latest post claims that agent-based monitoring is equivalent to extensibility (MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Agent = Extensibility).

I think this is conflating two completely distinct properties of a monitoring solution. Cacti is extremely extensible, with a plugin-based architecture and templates and all kinds of other goodies; yet it is not agent-based (actually it lets you choose — now that’s extensibility). innotop is not agent-based, and it’s extremely extensible too. Basically everything inside innotop is a lookup table of anonymous subroutines and data structures that you can tweak pretty much infinitely with plugins and configuration files that get merged into the running code dynamically. Extensibility is completely orthogonal to whether the architecture is agent-based. What about WordPress? It’s ridiculously extensible and it has nothing to do with agents.

So now that we’ve clarified that, what can we say about agent-based or agentless architectures? Which is better?

There are quite a few business angles you might see only if you’re here at the conference, and you won’t get from blogs. For example, let’s take a look at the contents of the shoulder bags they hand out with your registration. (This is only a partial list.)

• SnapLogic’s flyer gets it right: their system is compatible with “GNU Linux.” Hooray, a commercial company acknowledging the GNU operating system for what it is!
• MySQL Enterprise’s flyer has three big bullet points: MySQL Load Balancer, MySQL Connection Manager, and MySQL Enterprise Monitor Query Analyzer. The first two look like they’re probably built on MySQL Proxy. The last has a visual explain plan feature, which according to an elevator conversation is not yet built. I’ll stop by their booth and see. As you may know, Maatkit has provided a tool (which is designed for integration into other tools) that shows a visual explain plan for a long time.
• There’s an issue of Linux Journal, which does not get the GNU part right. And it has no articles about MySQL. Off-topic! Discarded!
• Infobright’s flyer says they can load data nearly real-time. I don’t know how you read it, but to me that says “can’t quite keep up with how fast you generate data.” So… what good can it possibly be, right?
• The conference bag itself has Zmanda’s logo on the side.
• Webyog’s flyer has one side for SQLyog, and one for MONyog. Each side takes the sparse but visually appealing approach of shiny icons to present a feature list. My favorite is the “Find slow SQL” turtle.
• JasperSoft’s flyer has soothing, professional blues and rich reds. It makes them look very trustworthy. (I’m not being snarky.) And they have lots of nice whitespace. It’s a little bit of a different look.
• Kickfire’s marketing department is really on the ball. I’ve seen a large number of flyers and other materials from them (online and offline) and they just changed their name and created a new logo and look-and-feel a short time ago. How do they do it so fast?
• O’Reilly has a bunch of half-sized flyers for their conferences. We should have asked them to throw in one about our upcoming book, the second edition of High Performance MySQL. Alas, opportunity lost. By the way, stop by the bookstore and grab a copy of the sample chapter.
• Zmanda, not content with stamping the outside of the bag, has a half-flyer inside it too, plus a chance to win a Digital Rebel to lure you to their booth. If you’re doing backups the way a lot of people seem to, you might want to stop by their booth anyway…
• There’s a CD for a free trial of WinSQL. But the CD case doesn’t say what the

Sorry. I have a short attention span.