Gearing Up for MySQLConf 2010

I’m looking forward to traveling to San Jose for this year’s MySQL Conference. If there’s anything that can trump the drama of conf two years ago, where we observed how Sun would handle its new property, and then the drama of last year, where we observed how Oracle would handle the pending acquisition, it’s going to be the drama around this one — the first MySQLConf since the Oracle/Sun merger has been finalized and approved.

I think there is some finality to the changing of the guard this time, since there aren’t really that many companies that could conceivably swallow up Oracle itself! (Maybe I shouldn’t say that — next thing you know they’ll spin it off heh.) But regardless, I am looking forward to getting to know Edward Screven and getting a sense from the keynote and other communications exactly what he’s planning to … DO … with MySQL.

Much as the United Kingdom’s Union Flag is composed of St George’s cross of England layered over St Patrick’s Cross of Ireland, itself layered over St Andrew’s cross of Scotland (look it up it’s cool), Pythian’s history has several technologies and database platforms within it, and Oracle features large in our history as does MySQL.

As a result, unlike some more tentative members of the MySQL Community, I actually love Oracle, the company. I first started using Oracle in 1993 and my specialization in this technology has served me incredibly well in my career. How? Because Oracle has succeeded beyond any possible expectations I had in 1993, and those of us who were there in the early days have grown in our careers alongside the company. Oracle has earned and deserved its’ success in the marketplace, having gotten there by product managing, developing, shipping, marketing and selling software better than any other Enterprise IT software company. It’s been nice to win with Oracle, as a user, as a community member, and as a service provider. They win because they’re great.

I love Sun as well (I owned my first Sun workstation as a 17 year old in 1989. Its hugeness dominated my tiny University dormroom.) Although I was devastated when Sun jettisoned my beloved SunOS 4.2 for that AT&T derived monstrosity, (a project led by my friend Gordon Kass now at Yahoo by the way – HISS GORDON), my love for the Sun platforms and technologies abides.

Finally, and most importantly in a MySQLConf context, I love MySQL. Pythian first started using MySQL internally in 1998 in the first revision of our Support Track tool. We could not have launched Pythian if we had needed to license Oracle at that juncture! Our formal commercial services launched in 2002 as the dot-com community that we serviced adapted to the realities of the post-bust era. We are, to my knowledge, the only database services vendor who was a Platinum Partner of Sun MySQL unit before the Oracle acquisition and who also has such deep and longstanding roots in the Oracle community (we are an OPN Platinum Partner with many specializations).

I’ve had an idea in mind for a while of a go-forward game plan for Oracle that I felt worked very well with the overall Oracle RDBMS strategy. They’ve made a few moves I expected and a few that I didn’t, so I can’t guess what their exact next move is going to be (but I still have my predictions…). I’ll be waiting, and watching very closely, as I’m sure the rest of you are — it’s going to be very exciting next few months. And as the story unfolds you’ll hear it here first.

Regardless, I think we have some very interesting news pending for announcement at the show, including some announcements about Drizzle. At least, I get the sense Brian‘s cooking something up he’s not yet telling me about.

Finally, I’m looking forward to taking the pulse of the community and finding out first hand how we all feel about Oracle, the MySQL organization within Oracle, and the various viable forks including of course our friends Drizzle fork I mentioned above, our friend Monty Widenius’ MariaDB and the builds from our friends at Percona.

These are exciting times for the MySQL Community. I’m incredibly excited about being right in the middle of it, and watching as things unfold from here.

And finally, I am looking forward to catching up and reacquainting myself with old friends and colleagues in the community, and making new friends and colleagues too. If you want to catch up with me at the show, I’ll be easy to find, and generally on top of my email and twitter. Rest assured I’m looking forward to seeing you and do not hesitate to reach out.

A few more notes of note

We’ve got a number of Pythians speaking this year. This post would have been way too long to list them, so we’ve created a separate listing here. As a special side note, we’ll be giving away copies of The MySQL Administrator’s Bible at all of Pythian’s sessions, authored by our very own Sheeri Cabral. Don’t miss out on your chance to win a copy of this must have tool. At the same time, you can shake Sheeri’s hand and congratulate her on becoming the first Oracle ACE Director for MySQL expertise.

We’ll be twittering away at this conference, as we usually are. At least those of us who twitter will be. I always find twitter far more useful during conferences anyway, and since I’ve been able to convert (with some help from @alexgorbachev that is) at least one twitter curmudgeon to using twitter during shows, I may be able to prevail on Rob too!

Anyway, our twitter pages:

• @paulvallee
• @singerwang
• @sheeri

… and I’ll keep you posted as to whether I can get Rob to play ball.

Another good option is just to add our @pythian/tweeters list to your twitter lists (or just click that link), I’m sure during the show most of what we’ll be on about will be conf.

Hope to see you there!

Paul