Welcome
Ronald Bradford is an industry leading expert in the open source relational database field. With 30 years of experience in large-scale data systems, Ronald specializes in designing automated, resilient, and scalable data solutions. His hands-on approach transforms complex challenges into measurable business success.
As an Enterprise Data Architect and Principal Data Strategist, Ronald is a recognized MySQL Subject Matter Expert, published author, and conference speaker with AWS certifications. He has received numerous international industry awards in the field. He has presented across 22 countries and authored multiple books in the Effective MySQL series.
Explore below to learn more about his published works, speaking engagements, and professional achievements.
Books
Published Titles:
- Effective MySQL: Replication Techniques in Depth
- Effective MySQL: Backup and Recovery
- Effective MySQL: Optimizing SQL Statements
- Expert PHP and MySQL
Presentations
Recent Highlights:
- 180+ presentations across 22 countries
- 2025: MySQL BR Conference, São Paulo
- 2025: MySQL Heatwave Summit, San Francisco
- Expertise in MySQL, AWS, and Cloud Computing
Awards & Recognition
Awards:
- MySQL Rockstars Hall of Fame - Legend - 2025
- Oracle MySQL ACE Director - 2010 - 2018
- MySQL Community Contributor of the Year - 2013
- MySQL Community Member of the Year - 2009
- All-time top blogger at Planet MySQL - 2011
Certifications:
- AWS Certified Database Specialty
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect
- Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.6
Recent Blog Posts
Speaking at COSCUP 2026 — Planning your upgrade to MySQL 9.7
I am excited to be speaking at COSCUP 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan on August 8th and 9th. COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users and Promoters) is one of the largest open source conferences in Asia, and it is always a privilege to present to the engaged and technically sharp community there.
Producing Two Sample T-Test statistics with SQL
The two sample t-test for equal variance is a statistical test to determine if the means of two groups are different enough that the difference is likely caused by some underlying difference, rather than random chance.
Building your first VillageSQL Extension with AI skills
This is a technical walkthrough of the vsql-extension-builder recently released May 28 at Percona Live Bay Area 2026 and found at https://github.com/villagesql/villagesql-skills . Highlights Install VillageSQL pre-built binary first Install SDK with pre-built binary second Install the skill Run it with your AI tool The output can be found at https://github.