In reviewing some of my notes I thought it was relevant to ensure this small MySQL gem is documented for my history purposes.

Historically I’ve seen people do a complex SELECT statement twice, first to get a COUNT(*) and then to retrieve the data, perhaps in a paginated format. In MySQL you can combined both SELECT statements into 1 SQL. You still need a second SQL statement, but it is less impactful to your system.

Here is how?

mysql> select sql_calc_found_rows * from mysql.user limit 2;
...
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> select found_rows();
+--------------+
| found_rows() |
+--------------+
|            5 |
+--------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The people, plain and simple.

I encourage you, if you are not part of the local MySQL community, then why not? Find a local MySQL Meetup group, attend the MySQL Conference, get online to IRC @ freenode#mysql, subscribe to some lists or read the forums. I didn’t meet these people being an observer, but part of the community.

As I wrote recently with some vacation time and the need to pick the brain of some experts I organized a quick trip to Germany to specifically visit Jan Kneschke and Paul McCullagh to improve my MySQL skills in certain areas on my own time (something I’d find harder to want to do at Sun when they owned all IP & copyright even during my personal time, so what incentive is there?)

As with the best laid plans of mice and men, the mention a few weeks earlier of skiing (my number one passion) and the chance to do this with Michael Zinner in Austria was too much a golden opportunity to miss, so this was added to my trip.

But it didn’t stop there. These were my plans yet news of my visit brought out others to want to see me during my visit. With Jan, additional events organized included my chance to see Kai Voigt, and then Jens Bollmann and Ulf Wendel. With Paul, lunch was organized with Lenz Grimmer. This is one beauty of a distributed company such as MySQL, people in lots of different places and something I am most glad that will not be lost just simply because I’m no longer an employee.

In the past year I’ve spent quality time with other MySQL Community people and also not just from MySQL. This past twelve months has included time with Sheeri Kritzer Cabral in Boston many times (including her wedding), Jay Pipes in Columbus (including also going there for Thanksgiving), Chad Miller in Orlando (even just to visit one day to see a shuttle launch), Gary Whizin in Santa Cruz, Baron Schwartz in Charlottesville and of course Farhan Mashraqi in New York. It’s great to get to know people better personally, to meet spouses and partners and to just consider life in general. People and their own goals and dreams are far more significant then just our own careers.

During my time at MySQL I’ve also made friends with several clients and have spent time with them in varying locations in the US including New York, Jacksonsville, Chicago and San Francisco.

In the past week following a request for any Linked In recommendations of my work, I’ve exceeded my goals of 25, and I’m now at 31 of 166 contacts, many from members of the MySQL community and clients.

I’m sure 2008 will be no different. Any offers for me to visit are always most welcome and to live by my motto “Life is Short. Live Life. Life is an Adventure”.

I wanted to follow up my earlier post My Ideas for MySQL Camp III with some of motivations. Luckily, good friend and colleague Jeremy literally took all of 15 mins to respond to my post with “So, I see your vision for the event itself. What’s your vision for the results of the event?” (Unfortunately with 150+ draft posts, it’s taken some time to complete my reply).

The present differentiation of MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise in my eyes is a joke. Now before I start or re-start more then already one flame war let me first talk about MySQL Enterprise. MySQL Enterprise is a great and necessary product offering by MySQL Inc. It serves essential services to essential customers with features such as commercial 24×7 support, MySQL Enterprise Monitor which is an excellent start when clients have nothing (and boy I’ve seen more then my share of these), monthly updates and certified binaries.

My gripe is not with MySQL Enterprise, but with little to nothing that MySQL has done with MySQL Community. Take these simple facts.

MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise were split at 5.0.27 in October 2006.
Only one contribution was added to the Community side, SHOW PROFILE in 5.0.37. What was to be a start of hopefully more creative contributions, suddenly stopped and has not changed since. My only thought could be, heaven forbid you now change the scope of functionality in 5.0 between Community and Enterprise, but wasn’t that the point?

Ok, new features change the scope of the base feature set. New features may make the product more unstable. Community people get this. The present release cycle process with the differentiation is a joke. You can’t add any features to 5.0, you can’t add any to 5.1 for like the past year. I’d go so far as to say, ZERO community contributions submitted even now would make 6.0. We don’t want to draw from sales and marketing features of Falcon and Online Backup.

MySQL Community is an essential product, it’s the only choice when MySQL Enterprise is not an option.

So to answer Jeremy’s question. What’s your vision for the results of the event?

1. To personally gain a better in-depth process of understanding the MySQL code, debugging, enhancing and contributing to MySQL
2. To see others gain the same skills, knowledge and appreciation.
3. To see better documentation of the process (A goal of the MySQL Community team)
4. To see the length and breath of creative input increase
5. To ignite some urgency and pressure to actually see MySQL Community differentiate to the benefit of the community.
6. To simply have fun, hack code and enjoy it with others

Since drafting this response some time ago, Sun has acquired MySQL, MySQL 5.1 still remains in RC, and we now have a beta of Falcon in an alpha of 6.0 (which I don’t get). With the MySQL Conference happening in a few weeks, I’ll be keen to know what’s going to happen with the MySQL Community differentiation and whether any information will indeed be forthcoming.

I plan to revisit this topic in the next 3 to 6 months to see if anything has actually changed as a result of Sun. We will just have to wait patiently.

In the past few months I’ve not had to look for a job, they look for me. If your a well qualified MySQL DBA there are many opportunities, I’ve had so many of these offers in the past 12 months I’ve lost count. However a DBA job would not offer the job satisfaction I’m seeking in my career goals now in 2008.

I’ve been able to consider 4 genuine positions in just the past few weeks, and indeed my new employer Primebase Technologies was someone I’d never considered working for, and indeed they had never considered me until a chance lunch meeting less then one month ago.

I did seriously consider working with Paul Vallee and the team at Pythian. Pythian looks for the best people from their respective levels of technology expertise, whether a college graduate or a 2 decade RDBMS veteran. This company has a great work ethic and a strong commitment to a 40 hour work week. With offices in multiple countries and a growing business, and a prominent client list as seen with the Pythian Web site even reviewing this company before talking to anybody provides a lot of good information.

I’ve followed Pythian closely since good friend MySQL She-BA Sheeri Kritzer Cabral was considering job opportunities last year. I was very impressed during this process. During recent vacation I took the time to visit Pythian, to speak personally with a number of people, from the CEO to potential fellow colleagues, to see the work environment, to have lunch and after work drinks. I invested more time in interviewing this potential company then they did in vis-versa, a principle I’d recommend to anybody for any future positions anywhere.

Today I read in How to become CEO, “Hire the best people. attract, motivate, train and reward the best people“. A good principle and one I know is at the heart of this company. Pythian is a company and a partnership I’ll be ensuring in the future remains strong. With a team of 60+ DBA’s across MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server they provide a dedicated service that MySQL (prior to acquisition) simply could not provide for market demand.

Comments on this site reflect the personal opinion of the author and may not reflect the opinion of any present or past employers.

I’ve had a lot of feedback from my resignation at MySQL. A lot positive, a lot of shock, even some avid discussion on why, and trying for me to reconsider my decision. Roland my evil twin (it’s a funny story), really challenging me which I very much appreciated, ensuring I had considered the multiple paths before me. I am a man of my own convictions, so reversing my decision was simply not an option on principle.

So what do I want in an ideal working environment. What was lacking, that I could not see and that I’m seeking. Here are two key points.

• “Continual improvement, 1% a day, review in 3 months.” This includes a commitment from the entire team, and a system to contribute, discuss, plan and see results. Something I’m a most firm believer of and will be ensuring is in place in my next position where I will have the responsibility.
• “Your employees are your most valuable customers”. This goes without saying. If you don’t treat your employees as well as your best customers they leave, often people however lower there expectations and time lesses people’s goals and desires.

One book I’m reading now on the opening introduction also sums my goals and desires well.

“Having ambition to better yourself, to be a contributor, to make a difference, to grow professionally, to be more successful.” – How to Become CEO – Jeffrey Fox

This sums we up well right now in 2008.

It’s often fun to review what you said previously.

Pride – August 11, 2006.
Your Ideal Job Requirements? – August 27, 2006.
If you can’t beat them, join them! – October 7, 2006.

The acquisition of MySQL by Sun Microsystems has caused a certain amount of news in 2008 from the Initial announcement at the MySQL ACM, to the completion in just 6 weeks. It has been a very quick transition and while there is the potential for further opportunities with Sun as an employee within the MySQL product line and possibly other areas, I have elected to pursue my professional goals elsewhere.

My leaving MySQL Inc has been met with comments from “Woot!”, “Congratulations”, “Good Luck”, ‘That’s terrible”, “Are you sure”, “I’m shocked, but I don’t blame you” and attempts from multiple people to reconsider and reverse my decision. I was pleased to know that it took no time from my first contacting colleagues and friends within MySQL before the community knew via the grape vine, even before my attempts to contact people.

The most interesting comment was “That’s terrible news”, to which my response was, “Well, not for me”. My best compliment has been “You are a such a great team player and MySQL aficionado.”. I actually had to look aficionado up, which means “an ardent devotee; fan, enthusiast.” I am very proud that my commitment to the MySQL Product, and MySQL Community and while at MySQL Inc/Sun has been noted, if only a small footnote in the success of the company.

There are a number of reasons why I’m moving on, which I’ll not be detailing here. In summary however, first, I have already set my career goals for Ronald Bradford 2008 and this includes the type of work I’m wanting to pursue, the money, and an increase in writing, presenting and speaking on topics in MySQL and other technologies and interests. In particular, I’m working (slowly til now) on consolidating my online presence into an online identity at www.ronaldbradford.com. The second and deciding factor was as a result of the acquisition and transition period. The issues of, the offer and requirements to transfer to Sun played an important part in my decision, being disappointed and unhappy across various things in this process.

At this time I can say that I’ll be leaving the US by the end of March as part of my US visa requirement. I will however not be leaving the MySQL Community, in fact one of my goals is to be able to contribute to the MySQL Community more, as I did prior to joining MySQL Inc in 2006 and I’m finalizing details with a prominent European Open Source company, and I expect to have some news here soon when details can become confirmed. For my friends and colleagues attending the MySQL Conference in just 4 weeks time, I’ll be there, so this will a perfect chance to catch me while I’m in the US.

I am sorry to leave MySQL. I have made many close friends here, and indeed it’s the people that helps make a company and among my peers I have great respect. There is a unique spirit working with an open source company and as I had ties to MySQL prior to joining the company, I’m confident these will continue and grow as my involvement with MySQL continues, just differently and more in line with what I want to do.

Those of you that know me personally, any recommendations via my Linked In Profile at this time is most appreciated.

Recently I got to spend a day with Jan Kneschke at his home in Kiel, Germany. This was an excellent opportunity to interact directly with a fellow MySQL employee and resident expert in several fields. Doing this on my own vacation time enabled me to control what I wanted to achieve.

Jan uses Linux, Windows and Mac OS/X all actively and with Synergy enables a single keyboard and mouse to work seamlessly across his three screens. I knew you could do this, just last year I tried to find out the software that could do it without obvious success.

Of interest was our discussion in English, while he was also communicating on IRC in German during the day. Being multi-lingual is something we don’t often consider and talking in one breath in English, then having to type in German is a little more complex then as I’m writing it here.

One of the discussions was the impact of the Sun acquisition, but I can’t say anything here as it’s all confidential. I don’t want the MySQL legal police after me. It’s business as usual here are MySQL. However we both discussed several concerns we have, a common topic among many MySQL Employees here at MySQL.

I spent some time browsing Jan’s library. Books browsed included “MySQL Database Design and Tuning” (Amazon link). (Why as a MySQL employee I haven’t see this, or been given a copy to review/read/access I don’t know. I had heard of it). “SQL Performance Tuning” (Amazon Link) by Peter Gulutzan and Trudy Pelzer who are now both MySQL employees, and “SQL for Smarties – Advanced SQL Programming” (Amazon Link) by Joe Celko.

Within the MySQL Database Design and Tuning book I came across SQL_MAX_JOIN_SIZE, a handy per connection session variable to limit the size of poorly joined SQL statements. Problem is it’s not part of any resource control restrictions so if you can’t control connections to the database by reporting end users, then what’s the real point. A nice idea that’s only partially implemented for real use.

Part of my time here, is to get answers. Some of my specific questions were around Lua (The scripting language used with MySQL Proxy). One particular question was the ability to process a SQL request and response programmatically at startup (to manage some global data), but the way to achieve this is to piggy-back off the first actual SQL request for the connection.

Another question was in regards to the testing of newer Lua scripts. The solution is to see the test cases which manage the Proxy via Mock up functions.

On Saturday, there was another change of aspect. Jan over the weekend was needing to do some security updates with lighttpd. “You need to still respond to requests from the community or they have the impression the product is dead. It’s a burden, you can’t really step out.” I completely understand as for almost 10 years now I’ve provided support and service to a number of not-for-profit organizations. My usage requirements are now very low, I don’t make any more software or website changes, just the occasional web server issue. (My present primary server uptime is up 560 days, and this was only to do an OS level upgrade from the past x100 days.)

The lighttpd project has up to 6 other committers that add work from time to time. For any successful Open Source project you need to ensure this occurs, otherwise it’s something you can never leave. Interestingly, Lighttpd is still a popular web server as per the Netcraft Survey Results.

Jan wakes up to the sound of the coffee machine in the morning, literally. It’s rather a loud and predicable process.

Not all work, we attended the Nubit 2008 event by NetUSE AG in the evening for networking, dinner and drinks. In his spare time on Saturday I caught him playing Hellgate.

Part of interacting with other professionals is you come across tools and sites they use to benefit their productivity or functionality, and this type of viral exposure helps greatly in your experiences and knowledge transfer.

And just in closing, two bizarre technology occurrences here (just before the full moon). The first, my computer become intelligent. I must have found a magic key combination in vim because it was doing interactive spelling correction while typing. It was even doing correcting of variables names. It was a little unnerving and even Jan was surprised (so it’s probably not just a German thing). The second, my Timex watch of at least 15 years (with many band and battery replacements) reset it’s self for the first time ever. I looked and it had 12:05am, Mon 1.1 – Weird.

Jan will also be speaking at the upcoming 2008 MySQL Conference, you can read his profile.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 with Michael Zinner – Architect of MySQL Workbench and Paul McCullaugh – Architect of the PBXT Storage Engine .

You have to love error messages some times. Today in MySQL is was “ERROR 1289 (HY000): The ‘UNKNOWN’ feature is disabled;”

What was even more interesting is the error message and indeed the error number changed across different versions. I took the time to also review the error in the current versions of 5.0, 5.1 and 6.0.

5.0.37/5.0.51a – ERROR 1289 (HY000): The ‘InnoDB’ feature is disabled; you need MySQL built with ‘InnoDB’ to have it working
5.1.19/5.1.23/6.0.4 – ERROR 1286 (42000): Unknown table engine ‘InnoDB’
6.0.0 – ERROR 1289 (HY000): The ‘UNKNOWN’ feature is disabled; you need MySQL built with ‘UNKNOWN’ to have it working

You can read more at Bug #29373