Colin Charles Agenda

The NoSQL/relational database debate has been going on for quite some time. MariaDB, like MySQL is relational. And if you read these series of blog posts, you’ll realise that if you use MySQL correctly, you can achieve quite a lot.

1. It all starts with Kellan Elliott-McCrea with his introductory post on Using, Abusing and Scaling MySQL at Flickr. Follow the entire series.
2. He starts of the series with Ticket Servers: Distributed Unique Primary Keys on the Cheap. Flickr scales using shards, and ticket servers give unique integers to serve as PKs.
3. Richard Crowley talks about OpenDNS MySQL abuses. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but it shows MySQL getting the job done.
4. Mikhail Panchenko talks about using The Federated engine for his series.

If you’re using the Federated engine, know that MySQL disables FEDERATED by default. In MariaDB 5.1.42, you get FederatedX, which is a maintained fork of FEDERATED, by the author himself! Bugs are fixed, and this is a supported engine, so if you’re using the FEDERATED engine, it might be wise to try out FederatedX.

I’d also like to bring to attention, an interesting essay by Dennis Forbes: Getting Real about NoSQL and the SQL-Isn’t-Scalable Lie. Monty says: “NoSQL is for very smart people who need a very sharp knife. People who are not capable of mastering SQL should not even attempt to try out NoSQL.”

A few notes about the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010.

1. Check out the schedule. Its more packed than you can imagine. You’re going to want to be in many places at once, by the looks of it.
2. O’Reilly Radar has an interview with Ronald Bradford: MySQL migration and risk management. You’ll get a teaser as to Ronald’s thoughts, and a bit of information about his two talks at the conference on migrating from Oracle to MySQL. He has swanky titles for them: Ignition and Liftoff! Expect a lot of technical meat in both these talks…
3. The idea of “mini-tutorials”. Some talks take longer than 45 minutes to deliver, so why not have 90 minute sessions? Ronald’s is a good example of this, though it’s spread over 2 days. We have more:
   • Don Beesing and John Powell talking on Where it’s at: GeoSpatial MySQL Part 1 and Part 2.
   • Tobias Asplund and Konstantin Osipov will talk about everything stored procedures in their 2 part series.
   • Peter Zaitsev will speak about InnoDB Architecture and Performance Optimization and the complementary Part 2.
   • And if you’re interested in Gearman, there’s a spread over the three days, about it! Join Giuseppe Maxia and Eric Day to run you through: Getting Started with Gearman for MySQL, followed by Boosting Database Performance with Gearman and finally Gearman MySQL Hacks, or Everything You Wanted to Do with a Database Server and You Never Dared to Hope.

So, have you registered yet? Early bird registrations ends March 15 2010.

Marina Mahathir, daughter of former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir, is crying foul in The Column That Wasn’t. Apparently, she has a Musings column in the local daily, The Star, and her column will be amiss for a week, due to the sensitive nature of the article. A few things to note:

1. The only bit of The Star that I read, is The Star Online: Nation, their business section, and occasionally their tech pull-out. I have never read Marina’s column before.
2. The Home Ministry has already issued a show-cause letter to The Star, and I guess they don’t want another one hanging on their shoulders.
3. Malaysia has the Printing Presses and Publications Act, enacted by none other than Marina’s father, Dr. Mahathir. If you are in print media, you apply for a license, every year, and KDN will grant/deny you. The Star is a public listed company, and the last thing they want is a suspension of their printing license. Guess what – Dr. Mahathir had already meted such a draconian ruling once before.
4. It was around the time of Operation Lalang, that Dr. Mahathir suspended The Star for a period of a year. In December 1987, he amended the act, aiming it at the individuals and the groups who abused the government’s liberal attitude, saying “Being liberal to them is like offering a flower to a monkey. The monkey would rather tear the flower apart than appreciate its beauty.” This is a short extract from Malaysian Maverick, by Barry Wain (currently not for sale in Malaysia, as its being held by the Home Ministry — reading it, you can understand why they would need to protect the interests of the ruling party).
5. Marina goes on to say: “But still there is room for courage, to stand up for freedom of speech. If we capitulate every time, then why bother publishing at all?” By now, such an articulate woman would know, that Malaysia lacks freedom of speech. The Sedition Act is called upon quite easily, and whom did they all learn this from? Her father. The printed press has always been controlled – those in the press will argue that things have improved, but Malaysians with a modicum of understanding by and large look at the press as controlled, and pro-government. But they have to be, right?
6. She continues: “And as many have pointed out, what is the point of censoring the mainstream media when there is the freewheeling internet?” Exactly. She says she has continued to write her column for the last 20+ years, because of “many loyal readers who don’t necessarily read anything online”. What is the reach of The Star? 1 million? In a population of 28 million. I’m willing to bet that The Star gets quite a lot of online readers, and the older population are also, reading stuff on the Internet. Malaysiakini with its pay-wall, has an incredible number of subscribers and readers. There are other avenues, and the online medium is the place the Printing Presses and Publications Act cannot touch. Censorship in itself, cannot happen, thanks to the MSC Bill of Guarantees (for which, we must thank Dr. Mahathir for). But freedom of speech, can/may be curtailed thanks to the Communications & Multimedia Act (CMA) (for which, we must also thank Dr. Mahathir). Sedition, offensive content, etc. are all things you can be charged for. You remember #yorais? Participated in it? You could be in violation of Section 211 of the CMA 1998.
7. Questioning The Star’s self-respect, is silly. They respect their shareholders, advertisers, employees, and readers. That’s why they didn’t publish something the Home Ministry might take offence to. After all, her beef should be with her father – he taught them how.
8. Reading through her article, I appreciate her honesty and her questioning of issues that are pertinent to many Malaysians. My opinion of her column has clearly changed – maybe I will start reading it regularly. She’s also on Twitter – with a protected account nonetheless – @netraKL.
9. Assuming the Home Ministry really did not want such an article published, they’ve probably got Marina Mahathir a lot more readers, just by trying to censure her. That is something the National Front has never learned. History, all but, repeats itself.

We planned for a company meeting to be in Iceland, with just about a month’s notice. You can do that, when you’re a fairly small company. Having been back from London during the winter, where it was snowing in the New Year, I was not exactly jumping high to visit Iceland. Ice? Gasp.

It was not exactly easy to get to Iceland: KUL – SIN – FRA – CPH – KEF. Five countries, in a little over a day (would have been about it, had it not been due to a delayed flight from Copenhagen — seemed that the plane was snowed in from Iceland). Upon getting my boarding pass for the last leg, I was asked by the SAS ticketing agent if I’d like a window seat – I naturally replied aisle, and he confirmed my choice with me, as if shocked. Then I realised, there might be some interesting sights from the plane, so I took his advice and got a window seat. Icelandair is nice! (in comparison to Lufthansa). Odd plane though – they run Windows (noticed from the mouse pointer), but the entire entertainment system is touchscreen based. Their magazine made a special mention that their playing cards were mentioned in Monocle’s Travel Top Fifty 2009/2010; they were for sale for 3 euros. I figured I’ll pick it up on the way back. Anyway, the view from the window seat? Completely amazing.

I arrived for the meeting on Friday, so missed a bit of the first day. It was pretty much in time for dinner, when I arrived at the Radisson SAS 1919 (important detail – there are 2 Radisson hotels here), so we headed to a restaurant called the Viking Village. Here we tried shark, had some nice lamb, and tried skyr, which they seemingly adulterated with something rather sweet along the way!

The next day, we had dinner at Orange. Before we stumbled upon it, we somehow found that on the 2nd floor, there was also the Malaysian Embassy. Very interesting :) Orange was beautiful, and Monty got us a tasting platter – something like a 5 course dinner, matched with appropriate wines, for each course! We ate like kings. It started with langoustines, then we had whale (which I think tastes a little like beef, maybe a little rare beef?). After that we had beef, and we got some pre-dessert strawberry foam, followed finally by our dessert (another variation of skyr). Being Friday, we all headed out for some drinks, so it was a night infused with lots of salmiakki, whiskey, and beer (this after the wines we had!).

Dinner on Sunday was at Hereford Steakhouse. For me, it started with a Cognac-infused langoustine soup, and for my main, I decided that I’d go for a steak and lobster tail. Skipped dessert, as I was pretty damn tired from the night before.

Monday was an excursion day. We tried our hand at horse riding. These Icelandic horses are apparently quite pony-sized, due to living in extreme conditions, thus eating less. We rode for about two hours, and it was the first time for me (and many of us). Let’s say I now have new respect for horse riders, and those folk at the races. You’d think it was cold; but the coldest part was stopping, giving the horses a break, and allowing the few to have a smoke break. I failed at getting my horse tied once we reached the stables – maybe I just had a stubborn horse (it was apparently a willing horse, not one for beginners). Consequently, I hurt a finger on my left hand, making it rather difficult to type!

The Blue Lagoon. Another photo, showing the steam.

For me, our visit to The Blue Lagoon was the highlight of the trip. I absolutely loved it. This alone, is worth visiting Iceland for. We were told that we’d be bored within an hour. Rubbish. We spent a good three to four hours there. They have a steam room, a sauna (which was a bit too cool for my liking), and of course, the geothermal spa. If more time permitted, I would have probably gone for a massage; apparently you can get one done while in the water. They clay-like mud, is quite relaxing when applied to skin. Your head is above water, but your body is submerged in the warm water. So when the cold winds do come, you still feel quite nice. Lifting your body up a little out of the water is also fun – kind of like “hot/cold treatments”. The experience is truly indescribable – you must experience it for yourself. Before going in, we decided to also grab lunch here – a day of lamb. Well presented, and very tasty, especially with the accompanying wine. Beware the bus journey: it took us over an hour to reach Reykjavik!

Monday’s dinner was at a restaurant close-by to the hotel. It was at Laekjarbrekka, situated a little on top of a hill. This place screamed romantic diners and fancy dining. They had good value for money sets, so I grabbed the langoustine set. It started off with a most amazing langoustine soup, flavoured with cream and Cognac, and we moved quite quickly to the main course (pictured), which consisted of langoustines, a langoustine tempura, and a baked/puff pastry item filled with langoustine. Paired with some rose wine, and a few shots of vodka before (I’m told that if you feel a cold coming, you should have some vodka – keeps the gremlins at bay), this was a most excellent meal. Dessert was home-made ice-cream, and again the presentation was fabulous. Truly a restaurant to take your romantic date to.

Anyway, the entire set of photos is on Flickr: Reykjavik, Iceland.

A few other notes:

• You can buy shark meat at the airport.
• Whale meat you need to visit Noatun.
• The airport Skybus is cheaper when you buy a return ticket. But when the flight leaves at 7am, you’ll have to get a taxi to the bus terminal, and then board the bus to the airport from there.
• Keflavik airport was voted #4 best European airport in 2008. Beware, their security insists you remove all electronic items from your hand carry. Cables included. This process can take some unnecessary time.
• Credit cards are accepted everywhere – taxis, kebab shops, pizza parlours, the post office, etc. I have yet to see Icelandic krona, because I survived quite well without it. If your transaction is under-1000kr, you may not even be required to sign the docket.
• The Keflavik airport does not have free WiFi. Power plugs are non-existent at the waiting lounges, but there’s plenty of power at the coffee places before you hit your departure gates.
• Nightlife is pretty disappointing if its not a weekend. Even on March 1, to celebrate the end of “beer prohibition” (beer was only legal in 1989, afaik), the crowds were not all that great. In fact, not many bars were open, even!

All in all, it was great fun meeting everyone (a lot of old colleagues from MySQL now work at Monty Program), I think the meeting was rather productive (I’ll write about that in another post), and the time outside of the meeting was simply fabulous. Good choice for a meeting Monty!

Its times like this, I want to hear from the greater community – the ones that are reading say, Planet MySQL or Planet MariaDB.

MySQL to me, and many others is an ecosystem. We’ve had for the longest time, complementary technology talks, like for memcached (which have been popular, filled rooms). NoSQL is becoming quite popular, and there are complementary technologies sitting around. To get an idea, if terms like the following turn you on: Hadoop, Redis, Pig, NDB (yes, MySQL Cluster is largely NoSQL before NoSQL became popular), Tokyo Tyrant, StormCloud (formerly Waffle Grid).

Now, do you want to see these kinds of talks at the MySQL Conference & Expo 2010?

Check out the schedule grid. Its pretty healthy already ;)

Also, how interested are you in talks about PostgreSQL and MySQL in similar environments? What about replicating between PostgreSQL and Drizzle?

So a simple yes/no, would help. I should get this into a poll, clearly… maybe next time.