Lenz Grimmer's blog

Two days ago we added the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License to the list of licenses in the MySQL FLOSS license exception. In my opinion exception is actually a badly chosen word - extension would probably be more sufficient here as it actually extends the scope of the MySQL client libraries license. From the introductionary text on top of the document:

We want specified Free/Libre and Open Source Software ("FLOSS") applications to be able to use specified GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries (the "Program") despite the fact that not all FLOSS licenses are compatible with version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the "GPL").

In other words, the license exception allows the distribution of a derived work including the MySQL Client Libraries under a number of OSI-approved Open Source Licenses. This allows a broader range of (non-GPL) Open Source applications to link against the MySQL Client libraries. In essence, it makes the GPL less restrictive.

It's already a month old, but I just stumbled over this ITtoolbox Interview with Jonathan Cheyer (Open Source Community Manager) and Murat Demiroglu (Senior Product Manager) from Solid Information Technology, in which Dru Lavigne talks with them about Solid (the company) and the solidDB for MySQL storage engine, which is currently in beta testing. I still remember Solid from my times at SUSE Linux, where it used to be a part of the Linux distribution along with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Adabas D and several other DBs...

While the MySQL Server source trees are maintained using the BitKeeper revision control system, several other MySQL projects (Connectors, GUI-Tools and the Manual) use Subversion instead.

To make it easier for external developers in getting familiar with the code base of the respective project, we now installed the FishEye SVN repository browser, which provides a very nice interface to the hosted repositories and boasts an impressive number of additional features like searching, diffing and RSS feeds.

This will hopefully encourage more developers to participate and contribute to these projects. FishEye will also make it more convenient for our own developers to work with their SVN repositories and should soon become a valuable tool for us.

On September 18th-21st, the second EuroOSCON will take place in Brussels, Belgium. I probably won't make it to this year's conference, but I really enjoyed the event in Amsterdam last year.

The session grid contains a number of talks related to MySQL:

• John Paul Ashenfelter: Data Warehousing with MySQL
• Peter Zaitsev: High Performance Full Text search for Database Content
• Lars Thalmann: Being a MySQL Developer

In addition to these sessions which are directly related to MySQL, here is a selection of talks that most likely cover it as well:

• Marcel Molina: Ruby on Rails
• Martin von Haller Groenbaek: Workshop on Open Source Licensing for Businesses
• Open Source @ openBC: How, Why, and Where To?
• Jim Purbrick: Open Source And Second Life
• Mårten Mickos: From Europe to USA - Culture's Consequences on Open Source Communities and Businesses

All in all, the conference program looks very promising. I wish I could be there...

Yesterday I sent out the invitations for our third MySQL User Group Meeting in Hamburg, which will take place on Monday, 4th of September (which is the United MySQL Meetup Day). As usual, we will meet at 19:00 in the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao" - the food is excellent and we can use a separate room with a video projector there. If you happen to live around Hamburg, Germany and would like to join, please RSVP and join our mailing list!

Currently I am still pondering on the topic of the presentation - I suggested to invite Paul McCullagh to talk about PrimeBase XT, his transactional pluggable storage engine for MySQL. Would you think this is a suitable topic for a user group meeting? Let me know.

Speaking of MySQL User Groups: have you considered establishing one in your area yet? It's actually a lot of fun and MySQL AB will sponsor the meetup.com fees. In particular, I would like to encourage our MySQL Users in India to take initiative - there are more than 300 people interested in meeting other MySQL people in the major Indian cities like Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and others. Step up and organize a meeting! We have collected some suggestions and hints on how to get you going on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Once you are up and running, make sure to add yourself to the growing list of MySQL User Groups!

In addition to our main MySQL Users Conference that took place in April, there will also be two small MySQL Conferences in Europe later this year. There will be presentations about our products and roadmaps as well as sessions about best practices and first-hand customer experiences. You will also get a chance to meet and talk with many MySQLers and share your thoughts and experiences. The conferences will take place in London, UK (Tuesday, October 17th) and in Munich, Germany (Thursday, October 19th). The conference program looks very interesting and there is an early bird discount, if you register before August 31st. So don't hesitate to register soon!

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!

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.

The modular concept of MySQL that separates the storage engines from the SQL parser and optimizer has recently caused a number of new, independently developed storage engines to surface. Here's an incomplete selection of projects around this concept:

• DDE - Distributed Data Engine, a research project of the Technical University of Dresden
• mdbtools - a storage engine that allows readonly access to Microsoft Access .mdb database files
• PBXT - a new, transactional storage engine by Paul McCullagh
• ritmarkFS - a storage engine that represents the content of a directory as a table
• solidDB - another transactional storage engine with many features, developed by Solid.

Also check the MySQL plugins category on the MySQL Forge for more of these and please add more to the Forge Project directory, if you are aware of other interesting MySQL plugins!

Currently, the integration of these engines into the server is still a bit tricky, as it requires patching and recompiling of the server sources. Hopefully all this won't be required in the near future, when our truly pluggable storage engine API in MySQL 5.1 has matured enough. It's very exciting to watch these projects to evolve.

And did you know that not only storage engines will be pluggable? MySQL 5.1 and up supports a plugin API that will allow the loading and unloading of other server components at runtime, without having to restart the server. This is intended as a more flexible replacement of the old UDF (user defined functions) interface. It will provide more modularity in the future - currently it already provides an API to implement different full-text parser plugins. This can be useful if you need to index context in other formats, e.g. PDF files or word documents. I am curious to see what other new plugins people will come up with in the future.

If you happen to use MySQL and live around Hamburg, Germany, here's your chance to meet with other MySQL users, developers and DBAs: I am happy to announce the second Hamburg MySQL Usergroup Meeting, which will take place on Monday, 3rd of July, 19:00. The location will be the same one as last time, the chinese restaurant Ni Hao in Hamburg-Wandsbek.  The food there is quite excellent and they will provide us with a separate room and video projector again. I'll try to arrange a presentation about MySQL and there will be plenty of time for chatting and discussing. If you'd like to join us, please RSVP via our event page on meetup.com and join the mailing list for further details! Looking forward to meeting you! Some pictures of our last meeting are available in my gallery.