Lenz Grimmer's blog

It seems to be a good time for people with experience in managing MySQL servers or developing applications based on MySQL: our MySQL Jobs Forum has plenty of openings. So if you are a seasoned MySQL DBA or developer, make sure to check for opportunities there, if you are considering a career change.

In addition to a proven track record on your MySQL experience, being MySQL certified should give you an extra advantage when you apply. The good thing about this certification? You can study for the exam by taking training courses, or all by yourself. Once you feel ready for the exam, you can head to any of the more than 3,000 Pearson VUE testing centers or any of the other LPI testing centers worldwide and take it there.

Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB, answers a variety of questions about MySQL AB and the MySQL Server on the german "Pro-Linux" news site. Worth a read, if you understand german...

Yesterday I received a sample copy of the "SUSE Linux 10.1 OSS - vorkon" DVD, which was assembled by Nicolaus Millin. While I have not installed it yet (as I by now have a very well running installation of SUSE Linux 10.1 on my laptop), the content of the DVD sounds very promising. In addition to incorporating all the updates that have been published since SUSE Linux 10.1 was released (around 100), this version also includes additional drivers like the 3D graphics drivers from ATI and nVidia, network card drivers like ndiswrapper, madwifi and rt2500 as well as drivers for AVM products and Logitech QuickCams. So the base system should already run very smooth and provides a lot of stuff that one usually has to download and install after the initial installation of SUSE Linux OSS.

But the fun doesn't stop here! Nicolaus also added a number of interesting applications, usually not included in SUSE Linux OSS, such as Adobe Reader 7.0, moneyplex, RealPlayer, FlashPlayer, Cinepaint, FlightGear and several extensions for Mozilla Firefox. He also included many LAMP applications (based on the famous Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP stack), that have already been preconfigured and are ready to use right after installing the packages! This is where the name "vorkon" comes from - "vorkonfiguriert" means "preconfigured" in German. Some of the LAMP apps included are eGroupware, Gallery2, Joomla!, MediaWiki, nagios, phpBB, Serendipity, Typo3 and several others.

All in all this looks like a well-rounded package - it reminds me a lot of how SUSE Linux used to be when people referred to it as the "everything but the kitchen sink" distribution. Unfortunately it seems as if the legal restrictions of being owned by a US company have caused a lot of the former SUSE benefits to vanish - nowadays one has to hunt for a lot of stuff like drivers and uncrippled applications after the initial installation just as with any other Linux distribution. Thanks to Nicolaus for scratching that itch!

You can purchase SUSE Linux 10.1 "vorkon" via amazon.de - for just 19,95 EUR this is a very attractive product, especially for Linux Newcomers. Give it a try!

We used to maintain a list of MySQL User Groups on the MySQL Developer Zone, which made it a bit inconvenient for new User Groups to get listed there. We've now moved the User Group list and some additional info to the Wiki on MySQL Forge (which also has received a facelift, thanks a lot to Colin and Ronald!). If you know of any other MySQL User Groups not listed there, feel free to add them! We are also looking forward to seeing more helpful hints on how to successfully start and maintain a user group. If you have any suggestions, make sure to include them - thanks!

In case you use Mercurial as your preferred distributed revision control system, an RPM of version 0.9 for SUSE Linux 10.1 is now available from my RPM section. Have fun!

Just stumbled over this article, which might come in handy for our Microsoft Office users out there: "Using Excel to analyze MySQL data" by Jason Gilmore explains how to set up the MySQL Connector/ODBC and connecting to a MySQL database using Microsoft Excel.

If you're a Linux user, this article on NewsForge covers a similar topic, using OpenOffice.org

to connect to a MySQL Server.

Update: Thanks to Guillermo Roditi for pointing out that both links pointed to the same article - now fixed. Sorry about that.

I'd like to chime in with Brian and remind you that the Hamburg MySQL User Group meets tonight, too! I have invited Jan Kneschke to give a talk about "Deadly sins in MySQL" (courtesy of Arjen Lentz) and I will also talk a bit about what's cooking at MySQL since the last time we met (it's been three months!). Looking forward to meeting you tonight - we will again meet at 19:00 in the Chinese restaurant Ni-Hao in Hamburg, Wandsbek.

Last week I was notified that my article about how to install and configure MySQL and the MySQL Connector/J was published in the Java Starter Magazine, a special edition of the german Java Magazin. It covers the basic installation of MySQL and Connector/J on Windows and Linux and how to write a small example program to connect to to MySQL with Java using the Eclipse framework. They were kind enough to send me a number of copies that I plan to give away at tonight's Hamburg MySQL User Group Meeting.