Lenz Grimmer's blog

The DOAG ("Deutsche ORACLE Anwendergruppe e.V.") is the German association of users of Oracle products. In November 2010 (16th-18th), they will hold their annual Oracle Users Conference 2010, which will take place in Nuremberg, Germany.

This event is quite an institution – it has been established more than 20 years ago already. This year, there will be more than 400 sessions by over 300 speakers. For the first time, this year's conference will also have a dedicated stream of sessions about MySQL and I'm happy to announce that I'll be there, too, giving an overview of the various MySQL Replication Technologies as well as a glimpse into a MySQL DBA's toolchest.

Here's the full list of MySQL sessions, as of today:

Tuesday 2010-11-16

• 10:00-10:45: Keynote: Oracle strategy and plans for MySQL (Rich Mason)
• 11:00-11:45: MySQL Architekturen für Oracle DBA's (Oliver Sennhauser)
• 12:00-12:45: Stored procedures in MySQL (Konstantin Osipov)
• 13:00-13:45: MySQL Backup- und Recovery-Strategien (Matthias Jung)
• 15:00-15:45: MySQL Idiosyncrasies That Bite (Ronald Bradford)
• 16:00-16:45: Plugins: Die Vielfalt unterm Dach von MySQL (Erkan Yanar)

Wednesday 2010-11-17

• 09:00-09:45: MySQL professionell betreiben (Mario Beck)
• 10:00-10:45: PBXT: A Transactional Storage Engine for MySQL (Paul McCullagh)
• 12:00-12:45: Bereitstellung von Web-2.0-Anwendungen mit MySQL (Ralf Gebhardt)
• 13:00-13:45: MySQL Replikationstechnologien - eine Übersicht (Lenz Grimmer)
• 15:00-15:45: Blick in die Werkzeug-Kiste eines MySQL-DBAs (Lenz Grimmer)
• 16:00-16:45: MySQL Workbench für Einsteiger

Thursday 2010-11-18

• 13:00-13:45: Aufbau eines Data Warehouse in einer MySQL / Oracle DB Landschaft (Nicola Marangoni)

Ich möchte nur kurz auf einige Konferenzen mit MySQL-Inhalten aufmerksam machen, die in der nächsten Zeit so anstehen:

Am nächsten Wochenende (21. und 22. August) findet in Sankt Augustin bei Bonn die Free and Open Source Software Conference (FrOSCon) statt. Auch in diesem Jahr wird es wieder einen von mir organisierten Track namens "OpenSQL Camp" geben. Es wird insgesamt 12 Vorträge rund um das Thema MySQL und andere Open-Source Datenbanken geben. Darüberhinaus haben die Veranstalter der FrOSCon einen dedizierten Track zum Thema "NoSQL Datenbanken" zusammengestellt. Es wird also reichlich Information zum Thema Datenbanken auf der FrOSCon geben!

Ich habe übrigens 10 Freikarten für die FrOSCon zu vergeben, die Teil unseres Sponsoring-Pakets sind (MySQL/Oracle ist Silber-Sponsor). Wer Interesse hat, sollte sich schnell bei mir per E-Mail melden – first come, first serve!

Das nächste OpenSQL Camp findet dann wieder in den USA statt, und zwar vom 15. bis 17. Oktober in Boston.

Davor gibt es noch einen Pflichttermin in den USA – die im September in San Francisco stattfindende Oracle OpenWorld, die dieses Mal gleich mehrere Konferenzen unter einem Dach anbietet: neben der "klassischen OpenWorld" wird es die Java One und Oracle Develop Entwicklerkonferenzen sowie den MySQL Sunday geben. Besonders letzterer verspricht interessant zu werden, es haben viele namhafte Speaker aus der MySQL-Community zugesagt.

Herbst und Winter ist traditionell Hochsaison was Konferenzen angeht, und auch dieses Jahr wird wieder einiges geboten. Seit der Übernahme von MySQL durch Oracle zeigen sich besonders die diversen Oracle-Anwendergruppen sehr stark daran interessiert, das Thema MySQL aufzugreifen. Nach der ODTUG Kaleidoscope, die im Juni/Juli in den USA stattfand, stehen nun die DOAG Konferenz in Nürnberg (16.-18. November) und die UKOUG Conference Series Technology & E-Business Suite 2010 in Birmingham (29. November - 1. Dezember) an, die ebenfalls dedizierte Vortragsreihen zum Thema MySQL anbieten werden. Achtung: für die Konferenz in England können noch bis kommenden Montag Vortragsvorschläge eingereicht werden! Wir freuen uns über jeden Beitrag.

Just a short announcement: I am going to join Ulf for his PHP Barbeque Tour across Germany, which will take place between June 15th until the 21st. We will start in the south of Germany and will work our way up north in one week, stopping by at various cities in Germany to enjoy a barbecue with local PHP User Groups and to talk about PHP (of course), MySQL, Open Source, The Web and anything else. We've set up a Wiki page that outlines the various stations of our journey. At the Moment, we will visit the following cities:

• Monday, 15th: Munich
• Tuesday, 16th: Frankfurt
• Wednesday, 17th: Karlsruhe
• Thursday, 18th: Berlin
• Friday, 19th: Dortmund
• Saturday, 20th: Hamburg
• Sunday, 21st: Kiel

I look forward to this trip and to meet and talk with people from all across Germany. If you are located in a city nearby and are interested to meet with us, please come over! The events will be organized by the respective local user groups, so please get in touch with them for the details — check the Wiki for contact information/links.

On early Tuesday morning, I made a quick trip to Paris, France, to attend and speak at the Solutions Linux / Open Source 2009 Conference. I've never been to this conference before and was quite surprised about its size - it's actually the largest Open Source event in France and it reminded me a lot of LinuxTag in Germany. Many well-known vendors (e.g. Sun, Novell, Canonical, Bull, etc.) were exhibiting. The also was a large "DotOrg" section for various Open Source projects and I was very happy to see that LeMUG.fr, the official MySQL User Group of France, had a table there, too! A big Thank You goes to Pascal Borghino, who manned that table on his own most of the time and answered questions about MySQL. I walked around the exhibition floor and took some pictures, which I have now posted to my Flickr account.

In addition to the exhibition, there were several parallel tracks with sessions. I was invited to speak about MySQL HA Solutions in the "Aquarium". Unfortunately I had the last slot at that day and they were running a bit behind schedule, so I had only 15-20 people in the audience. But I still had a great time and I received several positive comments about my presentation. I travelled back home early the next day - I wish I had scheduled some more time to attend the conference. I look forward to going there again next year, it was a nice event.

My colleague Joerg Moellenkamp stepped up and established the HHOSUG - a local OpenSolaris User Group here in Hamburg, Germany. It has a web-home with discussion forums on Xing.com. Our first physical meetup will take place on Wednesday, 4th of February, 17:45. We will meet in the the meeting rooms at Sun's Hamburg offices (Nagelsweg 55, 20097 Hamburg). If you plan to attend, please RSVP here. We have the following topics on the agenda:

• Organizational issues
• Collecting ideas/suggestions for the HHOSUG: what shall this group aim for?
• Technical session: OpenSolaris 2008.11 internals (Time slider, pkg, etc)

Luckily, Wednesday is usually the day that I am in the office anyway, so I'll just stick around. I look forward to meeting many fellow OpenSolaris fans there

I am happy to announce that there now is a MySQL User Group in Los Angeles, California! Their first meetup will take place on Nov. 19th at 7:30pm, Carl Gelbart will give a presentation about "Infobright, an Open Source Data Warehouse". The location has not been finalized yet, it seems: Sun offered them to choose between one of their locations in Universal City, El Segundo or Irvine. Thanks a lot to Joe Devon for stepping up and volunteering to organize this group, it's appreciated!

And if you are not able to join the LA MySQL User Group because you live somewhere else - take a look at http://mysql.meetup.com/ for a local MySQL User Group in your area! If there isn't one yet, have you considered organizing one by yourself? It's easy and fun and we will actually sponsor the Meetup.com fees for you! Also take a look at the MySQL Forge Wiki for some hints on how to create and run a user group (and make sure to add your own findings and experiences to these pages).

I had a nice chat with Kieran from Acquia at DrupalCon last week - we discussed how people running local Drupal user groups could expand their outreach into other communities, in particular into the MySQL User Groups. Scott Mattoon captured our conversation on video, which is now available on blip.tv:

Click To Play

The gist of what we talked about: if you are organizing a local Drupal User Group Meetup, check out http://mysql.meetup.com to find out if there is a local MySQL user group nearby. Chances are high that there is! And if not, you may find at least people in the area that would be interested in meeting about this subject. We also maintain list of user groups on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Consider extending your invitation for your next meetup to these folks as well! It's very likely that someone would be interested to learn more about Drupal. The same applies to other user groups, e.g. from the PHP community.

 

I personally run a MySQL User Group here in Hamburg, and I usually extend my invitations to a number of channels and mailinglists, including the local PHP, Perl and Linux User Groups. Every once in a while, a new member from these communities shows up.

So this thing works the other way around, too: if you are the organizer of a MySQL Meetup, have you thought about looking at http://groups.drupal.org/ yet? Maybe you will find a Drupal User Group in your very own town that you could invite to learn more about MySQL and exchange contacts? If you are looking for more tips on how to run and expand your User Group, I've created a page with useful hints about this topic on the MySQL Forge Wiki. Your feedback and additions are very welcome!

Are you a member of a local Linux User Group? Or a MySQL User Group? Or any other group that is related to open source software? Have you heard of the Software Freedom Day yet? This is a good opportunity to spread the word and showcase what OSS is all about to a wider audience. Some quotes from their Software Freedom Day website:

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September.
Software Freedom Day is a global celebration and education of why transparent and sustainable technologies are now more important than ever. With over 200 teams in 60 countries participating, it is a fantastic event to get your schools and communities involved in.
Go along to your local event or start your own event and meet a wide range of people, all working together to help ensure our freedoms are maintained by the technologies of tomorrow. Forming a Local SFD Team can be a fun, effective community building experience for your local user group and community.
Software Freedom Day is an outreach day where you can inspire newcomers with the values and quality of Free Software and communicate the broader issues of Software Freedom through a variety of activities of your choice. Is there something locally relevant to your country or region that you need to express? Is there some great local success story you want to tell? Software Freedom Day is your chance to stand united with the entire Free Software world with what you care about. Freedom.

Events will take place all over the world, organized by volunteers and local user groups. If you are interested to participate, here are some ideas and instructions:

• Instructions for forming a local team
• Registering your team on the Software Freedom Day site

A gentle reminder: next week, there will be two more stops of the MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour:

• Monday, April 7th, 19:00: Hamburg, Germany. We will meet in the meeting rooms of the local Sun Microsystems offices ( Nagelsweg 55, 22097 Hamburg). There will be two technical sessions: Giuseppe will talk about the MySQL Sandbox, Kay Koll will give a presentation about how to combine MySQL with OpenOffice.org. He will also describe the new report generator and give an overview over the future of OpenOffice. You can register for this event via meetup.com or Xing.com.
• Tuesday, April 8th, 17:00: Berlin, Germany. This event will take place in the rooms of the Berlin offices of Sun Microsystems (Komturstrasse 18a, 12099 Berlin). This time, Giuseppe will talk about MySQL as an open platform, Kristian Köhntopp will share a few hints he gathered while doing consulting work at customer sites. Please use Xing.com to register for this event.

At both events, colleagues from Sun and MySQL will be present to answer questions and discuss the acquisition of MySQL by Sun and all things Open Source. There will be free drinks and food as well!

We look forward to welcome users from the various related Sun products/projects, e.g. OpenOffice, Java, OpenSolaris, Glassfish or Netbeans. There is so much opportunity for collaboration and exchange of experience - I am very excited to be at both meetings to meet and talk with people from these communities. See you there! 

 

 

As Kaj already pointed out, the Sun/MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour will also make a stop in Munich, Germany this Friday. I will be there as well, we will meet at 14:00 at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Kaj and some other Sun people will join us a bit later. If you are in the area, make sure to stop by!

By the way, the Meetup Mashup Tour will make at least one more stop in Germany - I am organizing an event in Hamburg, Germany which will take place on Monday, April 7th (19:00). This was initially planned as another regular MySQL Meetup, but I offered to expand the scope a bit. We will now meet at the Sun offices, Sun will sponsor some food and drinks! In addition to the usual MySQL Meetup crowd, we expect participation from various Sun communities (e.g. OpenOffice/StarOffice, Java or OpenSolaris). As usual, there will be a MySQL tech talk (this time held by Giuseppe).

I look forward to this event - it will be exciting to mingle with the people from these other communities and to exchange experiences and make new contacts. If you live somewhere around the Hambur area and would like to participate, please RSVP via Meetup.com or Xing.com soon!

 

Just a short reminder: the Hamburg MySQL Meetup Group will meet next week, on Monday the 4th of February! As usual, there will be a MySQL-related talk - this time I will use this opportunity to practice my talk about "Performing MySQL Backups using LVM Snapshots" that I will present at the upcoming MySQL Conference & Expo 2008 in Santa Clara, CA. In addition to that I assume that there will be some questions about the acquisition of MySQL AB by Sun - I will try to answer these as good as I can. Looking forward to meet you next week. Please make sure to RSVP either via Meetup.com or Xing.com, so I can keep track of the number of attendees! Thanks!

 

 

Just a quick reminder for those of you located near Hamburg, Germany: on Monday, June 4th at 19:00 there will be our 7th MySQL Meetup. As usual, we will gather at the Chinese Restaurant "Ni Hao". This time, Sönke Ruempler will give a talk about the PHP-ORM-Framework "Propel". If you'd like to join, don't hesitate to RSVP via meetup.com or Xing.com right away! Thanks - see you there!

Yesterday we had our sixth MySQL Meetup here in Hamburg - we had a nice crowd of 21 people. Erick Dennis and Michael Otto from epublica gave a presentation about their experiences with MySQL and scaling it to keep up with the growth of the Xing.com web site. The talk was a rehearsal for their presentation at the upcoming MySQL Conference and Expo in Santa Clara - it went very well and we had good discussions and comments during and after the session. I took some pictures during the meeting, which are now available on my picture gallery. The meeting was rounded up with excellent chinese food, thanks again for the folks at the Ni Hao for hosting us! I look forward to our next meeting, which will take place some time in May. If you have a suggestion for a presentation, please let me know!

It's time for another Meetup of the Hamburg MySQL User Group! As for previous events, we'll meet on Monday, 2nd of April at 19:00 in the Chinese restaurant Ni Hao in Hamburg-Wandsbek.

This time there will be a presentation about "Xing/OpenBC growing pains", held by Erick Dennis und Michael Otto from epublica, the company behind Xing.com.

The talk will be held in english and is a rehearsal for their presentation at our upcoming MySQL Conference and Expo, which will take place from April 23rd-26th in Santa Clara, California. Please subscribe to our mailing list and RSVP, if you plan to attend the Meetup. Thank you!

I just learned from my colleagues in our Dublin office that Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB will be visiting them this coming weekend. They would like to take this opportunity to arrange a MySQL User Group Meeting, which will take place on Saturday, 27th of January, 18:00 o'clock in their offices:

MySQL Ireland,
Ground Floor, Misys Building,
Eastpoint Business Park,
Dublin 3
Ireland

This is your chance to meet and talk with Mårten and other MySQLers. There will also be free food and drinks and most likely a tech talk about MySQL (details will follow). So if you are located somewhere around Dublin, make sure to attend this event!