Lenz Grimmer's blog

fisl12 is likely the largest free and open source software event in Latin America. This year, it takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from June 29th to July 2nd. Oracle is a gold sponsor of the event and I will attend it as a speaker. I feel honoured and excited to be there – for me it will be the first visit to the South American continent.

They already have over 3000 registered attendees, so this definitely is going to be a great conference. There is quite a number of well-known names on the speaker roster and I look forward to meeting a lot of familar faces there.

The agenda is still under development but quite impressive already – too bad I don't speak Portuguese...

I will be giving an introduction and status update to Oracle Linux and as our virtualization technologies Oracle VM and Oracle VM VirtualBox. Other Oracle speakers at fisl12 include:

• Davi Arnaut - MySQL Engineering
• Roger Brinkley - Java Evangelists and the Community Leader for the Mobile & Embedded Community
• John Ceccarelli - Middleware Engineering
• Anil Gaur - VP of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and GlassFish Server in the Fusion Middleware Group
• Arun Gupta - Java EE and GlassFish evangelist
• Luke Kowalski - VP in the corporate architecture group
• Henrique Leandro - MySQL Support Engineer
• Simon Ritter - Java Technology Evangelist
• Dave Stokes - MySQL Community Manager
• Dalibor Topic - Java F/OSS Ambassador

Update: Leider muß mich meinen Vortrag am Mittwoch aus Gesundheitsgründen absagen — ich bitte die dadurch entstehenden Unannehmlichkeiten zu entschuldigen.

Die Mitglieder der Deutschen ORACLE-Anwendergruppe e.V. (DOAG) organisieren sich auf regionaler Ebene in Regionalgruppen, die in regelmäßigen Abständen auch regionale Treffen organisieren.

Die Regionalgruppe NRW hat für Mittwoch in einer Woche (27.2., ab 17:30) ein Treffen zum Thema Hochverfügbarkeit anberaumt, auf dem ich einen Überblick zum Thema MySQL-Hochverfügbarkeit geben werde. Vor meinem Vortrag gibt es noch eine Präsentation über "Rolling Upgrade einer Oracle 11g Datenbank" von Rainer Klomps.

Veranstaltungsort ist das Hotel Kasserolle in Siegburg, die Teilnahme an diesem Treffen ist kostenlos. Eine Anmeldung ist erforderlich.

It was ready for a while already, but now it's part of the official FOSDEM schedule as well: I am very pleased to announce the presentations and speakers of the MySQL & Friends Developer Room, which will take place this coming Saturday (5th of February) in Brussels, Belgium.

This year, our DevRoom will be located in room H.2213 (in the H Building), which has a capacity of up to 100 people and will be available to us from 13:00-19:00 o'clock. We have 12 sessions lined up, each will last 25 minutes (incl. Q&A). Without further ado, here's our schedule:

Time	Speaker	Session Title
13:00-13:25	Lenz Grimmer	Welcome note / What's new in MySQL 5.5
13:30-13:55	Oli Sennhauser	HandlerSocket and similar technologies - NoSQL for MySQL
14:00-14:25	Steve Hardy	Boosting Enterprise MySQL performance: implementing I/O prefetch for InnoDB
14:30-14:55	Istvan Podor	Over 20,000QPS, XtraDB performance show
15:00-15:25	Istvan Podor	Data Recovery for MySQL
15:30-15:55	Kenny Gryp	Taking Backups With XtraBackup
16:00-16:25	Sergey Petrunya	New query optimizer features in MariaDB
16:30-16:55	Lenz Grimmer	MySQL 5.5 Replication Enhancements: an overview
17:00-17:25	Giuseppe Maxia	Seamless MySQL replication failover with Tungsten
17:30-17:55	Petya Kohts	Multimaster MySQL failover
18:00-18:25	Seppo Jaakola	Multi-Master Replication Approaches
18:30-18:55	Stéphane Combaudon	A practical overview of Maatkit

I would like to thank all speakers for their submissions and for the efforts they are willing to go through in order to make it to this event! If you happen to be at FOSDEM this year, please stop by and join us.

We also plan to head out for a meetup over dinner after the event. If you would like to attend, please register, so we can take you into account! (Thanks a lot for Kenny Gryp for organizing this meetup)

Just a quick reminder: the Oracle user groups of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Russia are organizing a joint conference, the Harmony. It will take place on May 19th-20th in Helsinki, Finland. I've met the organizers at the IOUC summit that took place at the Oracle HQ this week and they would love to have some more MySQL content. So if you have an idea for a talk about a MySQL-related topic, please submit it! The call for papers closes on February, 1st!

My calendar is filling up with speaking engagements about MySQL at various events quickly. Here is a list of events for the coming months where I'll be present:

• On Wednesday, January 26th, I will be speaking about MySQL High Availability Solutions at the San Francisco MySQL Meetup. I feel honored for having been invited to speak there and I'm quite excited that venue is fully booked! I look forward to meeting so many MySQL users in one place.
• On Saturday, February 5th, I'll be attending and speaking at the MySQL & Friends Developer Room at FOSDEM 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. I helped organizing the DevRoom and preparing the schedule for this event. We have a great lineup of speakers and topics, and I will speak about MySQL 5.5 there. I've been to FOSDEM many times before and it's one of the OSS conferences in Europe that I really enjoy coming back for every year.
• On Thursday, March 24th I'll be in Weimar, Germany, attending the "GUUG-Frühjahrsfachgespräch 2011", a conference organized be the German Unix User Group (GUUG). The topic of my session is MySQL Replication Technologies - an Overview (in German). Erkan, well-known member of the German MySQL community will also be there to talk about "Toolbox MySQL", giving an introduction to the MySQL plugin API and technology.
• Finally on April 10th-14th I will be in Orlando, Florida to attend and speak at COLLABORATE 11. Organized by the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), this is a fairly large conference covering a wide range of Oracle Applications and Technologies. This year, they have more than 50 sessions on MySQL, provided by both well-known speakers of the MySQL community as well as Oracle employees. The MySQL talks will be given in one track, which spans from Monday till Thursday. So at least one does not have to choose between several interesting MySQL topics at the same time

If you happen to be around at any of these events, please stop by!

I've also submitted a number of MySQL talks for LinuxTag, which will take place in Berlin, Germany on May 11th-14th. I hope that my proposals are being considered and I would like to encourage you to submit one, too! The call for papers is still open until January 25th and it would be great to have some more MySQL content in the program...

Oh, and don't forget to mark your calendars for MySQL Sunday at Oracle Openworld 2011 later this year (October 2nd-6th)! I unfortunately missed last year's event, but this is going to be the conference with the largest MySQL show, lots of news and updates, and plenty of opportunities for networking. You can already register for the event at a "Super Saver" discount until April, 1st here.

Der Zeitplan des "MySQL & Friends" Developer Rooms auf der FOSDEM steht! Mein Dank gilt allen Vortragenden, die sich die Zeit genommen hatten, Vorschläge einzureichen. Letztendlich mußten wir eine Auswahl treffen, die Agenda ist nun auf dem MySQL Forge Wiki hinterlegt und wird auch in Kürze im offiziellen FOSDEM-Programm zu finden sein. Unter den Vortragenden sind viele bekannte Namen dabei und ich denke, wir haben ein sehr attraktives Programm zusammengestellt.

Gestern erhielt ich die Bestätigung, daß mein Vortragvorschlag für die GUUG Frühjahrsfachgespräche in Weimar im März angenommen wurde. Am Dienstag, den 24.3. um 11:30 werde ich einen Überblick über das Thema MySQL Replikationstechnologien geben. Im Slot davor wird Erkan einen Vortrag mit dem vielversprechenden Titel Baukasten MySQL halten. Ich freue mich schon sehr darauf! Auch der Rest des Vortragsprogramms sieht sehr interessant aus — ich habe viele mir bekannte Namen (besonders aus dem Sun-Umfeld) entdeckt.

Übrigens: der LinuxTag 2011 findet dieses Jahr vom 11.-14. Mai wieder in Berlin statt. Der Call for Papers geht noch bis 25. Januar. Ich habe ein paar Vortragsvorschläge zum Thema MySQL eingereicht, hoffentlich finden sie Zuspruch. Ich würde es auf jeden Fall begrüßen, wenn noch ein paar weitere MySQL-Vorträge von anderen dazukommen

Nur als kleine Erinnerung: bis Sonntag, 26. Dezember können noch Vortragsvorschläge für den "MySQL & Friends" Developer Room auf der FOSDEM in Brüssel abgeben werden. Die FOSDEM-Veranstalter stellen uns für diesen Zweck am Samstag, den 5. Februar von 13:00-17:00 den Raum H.2213 (100 Plätze) zur Verfügung. Wir haben schon eine Reihe interessanter Vorträge erhalten, würden uns aber noch auf weitere Zusendungen freuen! Jeder Vorschlag rund um das Thema MySQL ist willkommen. Pro Vortrag planen wir 20 Minuten Gesprächszeit plus 5 Minuten Diskussion ein, so daß wir insgesamt 12 Vorträge halten können.

Wir freuen uns über weitere Themenvorschläge oder auch Hinweise auf interessante Referenten, die wir noch ansprechen könnten! Vielen Dank.

Just as a friendly reminder about what I wrote a month ago: we've already received a number of great talk submissions for the MySQL & Friends Developer Room at FOSDEM 2011, thanks to everyone who contributed so far! However, we still are looking for some more!

You can submit your proposal via this form. The deadline for turning in your talk is Sunday, 26th of December, 2010.

Just to recapitulate, the DevRoom (H.2213) will be available to us on Saturday 5th 2011, from 13:00 till 19:00. Each session will last 20 minutes plus 5 minutes of Q&A. See this year's schedule for inspiration — I think we had a great lineup of talks that addressed a good mixture of MySQL-related topics. I am looking forward to your ideas and suggestions! Thanks in advance for your support.

As part of the upcoming Oracle OpenWorld/Java One in São Paulo, Brazil next week (which will also include MySQL-related sessions), there will be a free MySQL Community event, which will take place on December 8th, from 13:00-18:00.

Here's the (translated and abbreviated) description from the events page:

Oracle invites you to attend the MySQL Community Forum! Don't miss an evening filled with technical sessions led by engineers and leaders of the MySQL open source community. You will have the opportunity to learn more about MySQL, Glassfish and what innovations to expect from MySQL 5.5.

This free forum is open for members of the MySQL and Open Source community interested in knowing how small and large companies use MySQL and how they take advantage of our solutions. Choose from five highly technical sessions with well-known speakers, covering topics such as: MySQL Cluster, High Availability, Replication Tools, MySQL and GlassFish. See how Ricardo Eletro.com are using MySQL to achieve high levels of performance. Meet old friends and share your technical questions with the engineers of MySQL and Open Source community leaders. See how the GlassFish, NetBeans and MySQL work in perfect harmony. See what's new in the world of MySQL.

Sounds like a fun event to be at — if you're a MySQL user/enthusiast and you happen to be in the area, don't miss this! You can register for the event via phone or email to the contact information given on the page cited above.

I've been going through our bugs database to compile a list of some noteworthy patch contributions that have been included in the MySQL 5.5 release. Of course any contribution is appreciated, no matter how small! And the list is probably not complete — please let me know if I'm missing any. I omitted a number of smaller patches that fixed compile issues and I only considered contributions that were tracked in our bug database and were tagged as "Contribution".

Note that these are new patches that have not been part of any other MySQL release — of course, all contributions from previous releases are included in 5.5 as well. We also received a few patches for InnoDB (particularly by Mark Callaghan and his team mates at Google/Facebook), which were incorporated in the InnoDB plugin in MySQL 5.1 (and hence got included in the InnoDB version of MySQL 5.5, too).

Here they are, in no particular order:

• BUG#13175: SHA2 function (Patch contributed by Bill Karwin)
• BUG#14104: FLUSH LOGS now takes an optional log_type value so that FLUSH log_type LOGS can be used to flush only a specified log type. (Patch contributed by Eric Bergen)
• BUG#27249: Aliases for wildcards (as in SELECT t.* AS 'alias' FROM t) are no longer accepted and result in an error. Previously, such aliases were ignored silently. (Patch contributed by Martin Friebe)
• BUG#40368: mysqld_safe did not honor underscores in the same way as dashes for server options (Patch contributed by Erik Ljungstrom)
• BUG#45767: Removal of Field::pack_key, Field::unpack_key, Field::pack_cmp storage engine functions (Patch contributed by Zardosht Kasheff)
• BUG#50057: SHOW PROFILE CPU port for Windows (Patch contributed by Alex Budkovski)
• BUG#5724: "mysqladmin password" prompts for a password when none is provided on the command line (Patch contributed by Harrison Fisk)
• BUG#26780: A new mysql client option "--auto-vertical-output", which causes the client to test whether a result table is too wide for the current window (where available) and emit vertical results in that case. (Patch contributed by Eric Bergen)

A big "Thank you" to all the contributors!

Hello from Birmingham, UK! I'm here to attend and speak at the UKOUG Technology & E-Business Suite 2010 conference (what a name!) We actually have two packed tracks of MySQL Sessions this Wednesday, including a keynote by Richard Mason (Vice President of MySQL Sales and Consulting at Oracle) about Oracle's strategy and plans for MySQL as well as highly technical sessions about MySQL High Availability, Scalability and Performance tuning from experts in the field. Ronald Bradford, Oracle Ace Director and long-time MySQL community advocate will also be there, speaking about Common MySQL Scalability Mistakes and MySQL idiosyncrasies that BITE. The latter talk is actually going against my own talk about "Making MySQL Administration a Breeze - A Look Into a MySQL DBA's Toolchest". This is going to be interesting!

If you happen to be nearby, don't hesitate to come over! Admission to the MySQL session stream and the exhibition area is free! The online registration has been closed in the meanwhile, but I just learned that you can just turn up on site and the conference team will accommodate you. See you on wednesday!

It's finally official — please join me in welcoming my new/old colleague Dave Stokes, who just joined the MySQL Community Relations Team at Oracle as the new MySQL community manager for North America. Some of you may remember him from a previous stint at MySQL, where he was in charge of the MySQL certification program. Back then, he was already running the North Texas MySQL Users Group and a regular blogger on Planet MySQL. I am sure we will be seeing much more of these kind of activities from now on. So welcome aboard, Dave! I look forward to working with you.

Yesterday afternoon I returned from the SAPO CodeBits 2010 conference, which took place in Lisbon, Portugal. Just like the previous year, CodeBits has been a great conference to be at and I am grateful for having been selected for participation. Thursday, the first conference day was quite a busy one for me — I gave two presentations in a row:

• What's new in MySQL 5.5? (Slides)
• How to build you own Quadrocopter (Slides)

Afterwards, I also participated in a panel discussion about "To SQL or not to SQL", together with representatives from other open source databases (@fdmanana from CouchDB, @antirez from Redis and @bpedro for PostgreSQL). It was an interesting but somewhat slow discussion and the overall conclusion is still the same: there's more than one tool for a given job, choose carefully what your requirements are and don't just blindly believe the hype.

On Friday, I had some more time to attend other people's presentations. In the evening I took part in another panel discussion about Physical Computing. I also had the "opportunity" to try one of the Nuclear Tacos (Video) they served — I have never had something that hot before. Ouch! Fortunately my tastebuds recovered in time for the speaker's dinner, which took place later that evening. We went to a Rodizio restaurant nearby, the food was plenty and delicious!

Saturday was a pretty low activity day for me. I spent some time in the DIY corner, doing some Arduino hacking. Later that day I attended the project presentations and the closing keynote. Unfortunately a majority of the content was in Portuguese, so I only got parts of the content. But it was still fun! I've published my pictures of CodeBits on Flickr, I hope you enjoy them

Later today, I will be travelling to the DOAG Conference 2010 in Nuremberg, Germany. I'll be giving two talks (in German) there on Wednesday, 17th:

• MySQL Replikationstechnologien - eine Übersicht
• Blick in die Werkzeug-Kiste eines MySQL-DBAs

I already received my speaker badge for this conference (see the picture below). Cool idea: you can use the public transport facilities (Buses, Trams) for free, by presenting this card!

There will also be a MySQL Community Meetup on Tuesday, 19:00 at the Press Center of the Congress Center East. If you're around, you're more than welcome to join us there!

Next up in the conference schedule for this year is the UKOUG Conference in Birmingham, UK (Nov. 29th - Dec. 1st). We helped them with setting up a MySQL session stream, and they've created an interesting lineup of talks. I'll be speaking about Making MySQL Administration a Breeze - A Look Into a MySQL DBA's Toolchest. See you there!

I've been informed about two upcoming events/conferences that are organized by the independent Oracle user groups of the respective countries. If you're nearby, how about submitting a talk about a MySQL-related topic?

On March 29, 2011 the the Oracle Benelux User Group will have their yearly OBUG Benelux Connect 2011 conference, which will take place in Brussels, Belgium. You can submit your proposal until December 3rd, 2010 via this link.

On May 19th and 20th, 2011, the Oracle User Group Finland together with the Oracle User Groups of Estonia, Latvia and Russia will organize the EMEA Harmony 2011 Spring conference, which will take place in Helsinki, Finland. The Call for Papers has been opened — you can submit your speaking proposals until February 1st, 2011 via this submission form.

And while we're at it: the MySQL Developer room at FOSDEM 2011 in Brussels is still seeking for more talk proposals, too! Please consider submitting your suggested talk until Sunday, 26th of December, 2010