PrimeBase XT (PBXT) in the news

In today’s Official MySQL Press Release, PrimeBase XT (PBXT) has been named along with three other storage engine partners in “Sun Celebrates Third-Party MySQL Storage Engines“.

This a great achievement for a small company to be recognized in the certified storage engine partner program, in comparison to the other companies that are much larger on the balance sheet. This continues the news with last week you may have read PrimeBase Technologies a MySQL Platinum Level Partner.

A noted absence from the list is Nitro, an expected absence was Solid.

Off to a flying start

Marten has opened the 2008 MySQL Conference & Expo. This time he started in his opening comments “I have more to say to more people, and given less time to say it”.

His answer to why Sun bought MySQL included slides showing “Alignment in Culture and Vision” and “What’s in it for you – Performance & Scale, Support, Marketplace”.

This year the MySQL Conference has over 2,000 people and 55 exhibitors.

What was funny, was the photo showing the burning of the IPO Prospectus. Marten mentioned now with many Sun lawyers he has to be more careful what to day. I actually have an interesting extension to this at Watching what you say

Some points of note for me:

  • The Web Economy continues to have exponential growth and the need for new technology but a goal of linear growth.
  • Continuing to mention becoming “Disruptive Online Innovations”
  • The Online landscape consists of the Software Development Model, Business Model,Software Deployment Model and Organisational Model.
  • He Reiterated the Design Priorities at MySQL. Reliability, performance, easy of Use
  • MySQL Workbench is now GA. Congratulations Michael Zinner.
  • On Storage Engine Update, PrimeBase, PBXT and Paul McCullagh got a mention. In addition to he usual suspects, but ScaleDB & Tokutek are newly mentioned and are Exhibitors this year.

A few words from Jonathan Schwartz

Following Marten Mickos, the second opening keynote at the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo was by Jonathan Schwartz CEO and President of Sun Microsystems. Blog

His opening joke was about dinner with Marten, to which Marten said “You not going to get a keynote, unless you buy the company.”

So what was striking for me in his presentation “What is Sun’s Agenda?

  • There is no open-source phone yet, but that’s an industry that needs disrupting.
  • Like the need for water or electricity, The Network Has Become A Social Utility.
  • We want to work with the community, create greater innovation.
  • The future, the price tag of Free, the philosophy of Freedom

I had a chance to meet Jonathan and Rich Green on Sunday night, and it was great to see Jonathan learning about, and getting behind the product PBXT – The Community Engine a MySQL 5.1 open source engine.

MySQL Awards at the MySQL Conference & Expo

Announced this morning is this year’s MySQL award winners.

2008 MySQL Application of the Year

  • FaceBook – Social Network
  • Virgin Mobile France – Mobile Operator
  • eBay – ECommerce Site

2008 MySQL Partner of the Year

  • Zmanda
  • Microsoft
  • Computer center

2008 MySQL Community Member of the Year

Watching what you say?

Marten has opened the 2008 MySQL Conference and Expo this morning in Santa Clara.

What was funny in the early slides was the photo showing the burning of the IPO Prospectus. Marten mentioned now with many Sun lawyers in the audience he has to be more careful what to say.

This morning while coming down for breakfast, a Sun employee entered the lift. I introduced myself, and he indicated he knew me by name. When I asked what department he was in, he said “legal”. Being intrigued as to who he knew me, I’d discovered he has read my emails and blog posts.

I must admit I’ve met a number of new people this week and the first word has been “Oh!”, as in they have heard of my name previously.

These have been unexpected responses and information for me, I’m not normally surprised like this. I’ll not be changing what I say, and how I say it, professionally my writing and publishing will continue to embody “Opinions, Expertise, Passion”.

MySQL Community Photo Day Prizes

I forgot to mention in Support the MySQL Community Photo Day that PrimeBase Technologies is providing 3 prizes for the best photos uploaded.

First Prize $150 Amazon Gift Voucher
Second Prize $100 Amazon Gift Voucher
Third Prize $50 Amazon Gift Voucher

So, take your photo with other community supporters — they’ll also be wearing their open source t-shirts. You can upload photos to www.flickr.com/groups/mysqlcommunityphotoday.

The pursuit of a synchronous world

Well at least your MySQL database world.

As Paul eluded to, PrimeBase Technologies has a project to provide synchronous replication for MySQL in a High Availability environment. It is more then an idea, there is a plan.

Is it possible?
What are the use cases?
How can you use it?
Would you use it?

Some input to date. We need these questions and more, and we seeking more input for discussion.

Unfortunately the opportunity to hear any input during a presentation is left to the last day of the conference, so there has been created a BoF session on Tuesday night for a round table discussion if necessary. People are encouraged to bring specific cases and situations for feedback, the reasons why MySQL Replication, MySQL Cluster, DRBD/HeatBeat or any other solution does not satisfy your needs, and what would.

If you can’t wait you may need to seek out Booth #518, and make a time to seek out the Technology Expert.

Just today, Peter Zaitsev of MySQL Performance Blog also writes in State of MySQL Market and will Replication live ?, “Customers are constantly asking me if there is something which would help them to scale MySQL and get some HA out of the box even on the medium level. Seriously – MySQL Cluster, Continuent, Master-Master Replication, DRBD or SAN based HA architectures all have their limits which makes neither of them used for very wide class of applications.” to confirm this pursuit.

Support the MySQL Community Photo Day

Updated On good advice from Sheeri I made a few comments clearer.

It has been proposed that the integral “MySQL Community Photo Day” be on Thursday April 17 2008, the final day of the MySQL Users Conference.

Wear a t-shirt from an open source community project on Thursday, whether a PrimeBase PBXT one or your favorite open source project. Get your photo taken with the masses of community supporters. If your not attending this year, this doesn’t mean you can’t also contribute a photo yourself from what location you are from. Save a saving fund for next year but get us a photo.

It doesn’t have to just be Thursday, photos will be accepted at any time before then. Upload a photo and win a prize. (Baron you definitely get chocolate)
Their is a Flickr group called “MySQL Community Photo Day” at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mysqlcommunityphotoday

This is a chance for you to support the community. There is already a small band of supporters before my post already including Colin C, Paul M, Lenz G, Baron S, Sheeri K.

MySQL Speakers and Presenters at LinkedIn

There is a Linked In group I created some time ago but forgot to advertise that is for MySQL Speakers and Presenters.

If you a speaker or presenter of MySQL content, confirm your registration here.
You will need to have a reference to a website confirming you have been a speaker at a MySQL Event such as a User Conference, MySQL Camp or Local MySQL Users Group.

Hopefully overtime we can build a consolidated index at MySQL Forge Presently some pages exist including MySQL Conference & Expo and User Group Presentations but I’m accepting input for a model to have a central page, and link to or upload of presentation. Any input welcome.

Storage Engines at the MySQL Conference

I’ll be following closely the progression of Storage Engines available in the MySQL Database server, well soon to be available when 5.1 gets to GA (hopefully by end of Q2 which is what we have been told). Tick, Tick, time is running out.

PrimeBase XT (PBXT) and Blob Streaming is a focus as PrimeBase Technologies, the company which I want to note for people is an Open Source company, committed at providing an open source alternative to the other commercial players. You also have at the MySQL Conference talks on the the existing InnoDB from Innobase (a subsidiary of market RDBMS leader Oracle). There is a Nitro presentation, an Infobright presentation, no Solid presentation surprisingly (the IBM news happening after submissions closed). We also have from MySQL, presentations on the internally developed storage engines Falcon and Maria, both products that won’t even be in 5.1 but 6.0, however Maria is presently a different branch of 5.1 so I don’t know how that works. Will it be in 5.1?

But what I want to seek is more news of KickFire, a Diamond Sponsor, an engine with embedded H/W, something that’s been obviously worked on in reasonable stealth. For me it’s not just interesting, it’s a competitor in our technology space, so I’ve been researching Joseph Chamdani and some of his patents.

Plenty of news in the past few weeks on Kickfire including Kickfire Update by Keith Murphy on April 3, Kickfire: stream-processing SQL queries by Baron Schwartz on April 4, Kickfire looking to push MySQL limits by Farhan Mashraqi on April 4, and Kickfire Kickfire Kickfire by Peter Zaitsev on April 4, and myself back on March 23.

So what can I make from the lack of company information and posted information to date.

  • Hardware based acceleration.
  • No Solid State Drive (SSD) Technology, at least not yet but C2App mentions SSD.
  • Data Warehousing, lending to thinking it’s not a transactional storage engine
  • A new storage engine and a new approach to data storage. I find this surprising, as it takes years to develop a feature complete storage engine, and most new 5.1 storage engines are indeed existing products, take Nitro, Solid, Infobright and Falcon. Only PBXT has been written from the ground up for MySQL 5.1, so looking to know more about it’s development
  • Expensive, it’s dedicated H/W + (assuming) MySQL Enterprise + Storage Engine

The MySQL Conference recap

I recently had the opportunity to return and speak at the Brisbane MySQL Users Group. I spent some time talking about MySQL User Conference 2007 Summary and Life as a Consultant. My summary of included:

  • Overview
  • Keynotes
  • Marten Mickos – MySQL
  • Guy Kawasaki
  • Michael Evans – OLPC
  • Rasmus Lerdorf – PHP
  • Paul Tuckfield – YouTube
  • Community Awards
  • Product Road Map
  • Google
  • Storage Engines
  • Dorsal Source
  • What’s Next

One question was posed to me. “What new did MySQL do this year?” being from the last User Conference. MySQL did seem to not make a great impact at the conference over the successes of the previous year. I had to think some time to come up with the following list.

And most recently:

  • Open Source Database Vendor Partners with LINBIT to Jointly Promote & Support DRBD for MySQL Enterprise Read More
  • IBM DB2 as a Certified Storage Engine for MySQL on System i Read More

It’s hard to say if these are big ticket items or not, but it is definitely disappointing that 5.1 GA is still MIA. We stay tuned.

I also managed a much better response then from my Conference Presentation opening Slide.


“How can you tell an Oracle DBA has touched your MySQL Installation?”

MYSQL_HOME=/home/oracle/products/mysql-version
mysqld_safe –user=oracle &