Today at the RMOUG Training Days 2012 event I gave an introduction presentation on MySQL Security Essentials covering the following topics:
Download slides for MySQL Security Essentials.
It can be hard sometimes, particularly with startups to determine what to charge. I have tried various models over the years from nothing, to greatly reduced, to full-price. Nothing works well.
As one of the top consultants in MySQL, I kept my rates down as an individual to compete competitively with the 3 or 4 other companies world wide that provide relative services, this in the end hurt my bottom line.
I charge a premium rate that matches my skills, expertise and competitors. I charge that for all customers, large, small, old and new. When the value of my work in performance tuning, disaster management, scalability and architecture is offset by the loss of potential or future business it is not difficult to justify a reasonable rate. I also continue to speak extensively, write and publish materials that provides detailed practical knowledge for organizations and individuals that can invest the time, but not the money.
I am still shocked when large established companies want a discount, just last week for a few hours work a company wanted 33% off.
An extract from “3 Things Entrepreneurs Should Never Depend On When Starting A Company” provides a great re-enforcement about what is appropriate pricing.
Fearful Pricing
When I started my business, I undercharged for my service. I didn’t have the confidence to ask for a decent price, and I thought I had to have the lowest price in order to get business.
What did these practices get me? Low profits and poor cash flow.
In order to survive as a startup—both financially and mentally—it’s crucial that you make sure you’re receiving maximum reward for your maxed out efforts. If you don’t see the true value in your business, how do you expect your clients to do so? Your work is worth it; adjust your prices accordingly.
Read more: Business Insider
At the IOUC leaders’ summit in San Francisco this week, key leaders from Oracle, Java and MySQL user groups world wide have been meeting. This has included the key Oracle MySQL resources from the community, marketing and product teams. The Java User Groups and MySQL User Groups have been well represented and there has been very welcoming discussion with the IOUC about how we can become active within the Oracle Community.
There has been key discussions of upcoming and proposed MySQL events including the great outreach by the Oracle MySQL team with existing Open Source conferences this year including Scale, FOSDEM and South East Linuxfest just to name a few.
You can see the upcoming events at http://mysql.com/news-and-events/events/. In February alone there will be events in North Carolina, California, Texas, Frankfurt Germany and Stockholm Sweden. I will also be speaking in Denver at 2 events and Salt Lake City.
There is a much longer list then what is shown here, and we are working on getting the full list more available.
More info by Dave Stokes at SCaLE’s MySQL Day a big hit and Keith Larson More User Groups.
As a consultant I often use the MySQL Reference Manual to provide additional information for clients. I am very happy to recognize the quality of the content in the MySQL documentation, but why is the searching of the manual so, so bad?
While reading the General Security Issues section of the MySQL 5.5 manual, I performed a search for “CREATE USER”. I was not asking for anything abstract, this is an actual SQL command. I was rather horrified to find that the results could not even list the appropriate manual page in the first page of results.
I am not an expert in full-text search, however it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that a SQL keyword, the title of a page, in the language of the current page (English) and the current version of the Manual (5.5) should be an easy result. This is a simple weighted result right? Wrong.
In my opinion, The Server Option and Variable Reference at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysqld-option-tables.html rates as my most important page. This is a consolidated index that enables a drill down to the Server Command Options, System Variables, Startup and replication specifics, as well as important information on default values and differences between versions including point releases.
However, there is another page not in the actual manual, but at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysqld-version-reference/en/mysqld-version-reference-optvar.html which is an Options/Variables reference akin to the Reference Manual, but includes a 5.x version matrix.
Recently I was asked about some options that had to be removed from an upgrade to MySQL 5.5. Some of these were obvious, however not all. This page enabled me to confirm deprecation (as expected), and also point to important reference material.
These options where:
The use of table_type was a 3.x/4.x relic, replaced with engine, so I was surprised this option was still even valid. The option replaced with default_storage_engine. The page defined this as deprecated in MySQL 5.0
log_long_format is also old, and definitely modified since MySQL 5.1 with the general_log_xxx options. In fact this has been deprecated since 4.1
I have never liked the master-xxx options, in favor of a CHANGE MASTER command and synchronization issues with the master.info file and master-xx options. master-connect-retry and several other options were deprecated in 5.1.17. On a side note, if you look at this option in the MySQL 5.5 Reference Manual you get Obsolete options. The following options are removed in MySQL 5.5. If you attempt to start mysqld with any of these options in MySQL 5.5, the server aborts with an unknown variable error. To set the replication parameters formerly associated with these options, you must use the CHANGE MASTER TO … statement (see Section 12.4.2.1, “CHANGE MASTER TO Syntax”).
Finally default-character-set. Initially I thought that is definitely still applicable, however the handy cross reference reminded me, this is also deprecated in MySQL 5.0 and the Reference Manual again stating default-character-set is also deprecated in 5.0 in favor of character-set-server.. The name has simply changed in newer version.
With so many options and as a consultant I work with many different versions each week, I sometimes need a refresher of the changes in the versions of the past 5 years. Definitely my second most important page.
If you have a favorite page, please let me know.
I would also like to say thank you to the Oracle/MySQL Documentation team that do a great job in providing an excellent resource to an open source product. We would all do well to appreciate this in comparison to other open source documentation in companion technologies and related tools. With every new release of a MySQL product you don’t realize that somebody reviewed, tested and wrote about features without receive the limelight.