Colin Charles Agenda

Its worth noting that MySQL will have a big presence at OSCON 2008. All this, thanks to Sun, as Sun’s a fairly big sponsor (Platinum Sponsor), and we’ve got a humongous booth!

There are booth talks, that you must attend! They range from getting started with the MySQL Community, MySQL 5.1, MySQL Workbench, MySQL Cluster, and many more. Expect to see the schedule up at the booth (and yes I know, there are a whole heap of already interesting talks in the program, but a lot of the talks at the booth are also scheduled during breaks).

Today, I saw the ad copy, which reads “Our Booth is Your Booth”. “We have whiteboards, tables, electrical outlets and fresh coffee. Come to converse, share ideas, participate or simply to vegetate.”

Seriously, that’s advertising that bodes well with me. Note that OpenOffice.org will also be there. See you at OSCON :)

Good news, MySQL 5.1.26-rc has been released. From the release notes: “MySQL 5.1.26-rc is slated to be the last release candidate before we declare MySQL 5.1 as “production ready” (GA).”

If I were you, I’d start testing it out in environments that you’re planning to run MySQL in, or upgrade to 5.1 in. Feedback and testing to iron out issues, is important, so if you find a bug that affects you, report it!

In other news, on the Sun Developer Network (SDN) site, there’s a couple of resources such as the Python Developer Center and the Ruby Developer Center. At MySQL, we’ve got the DevZone, focusing on languages such as Ruby and Python, with MySQL use. However, the resources can definitely be improved upon, and maybe there should be more synergy with SDN, if its getting more eyeballs than the DevZone. Thoughts on how to improve resources for developers? Please leave a comment

If you’ve not read Beyond LAMP, don’t hesitate to take a look-see. I learnt that there are a whole bucket-load of Web/App Servers out there.

In addition to having the Malaysia University Days, there’s something brewing in Singapore too.

First up, there is the Singapore MySQL Meetup Group, having a meeting in July, at a new location (Sun Solutions Centre, Central Mall). Confirm your attendance for a meetup at 7pm on Monday, July 14 2008.

And the other reason to be in Singapore, is the Sun Developer Days 2008 Singapore, happening on Tuesday, July 15, 2008. This is an all-day long event, held at the Hilton Hotel - register now! The agenda is packed, and there is a big web focus: profile applications using the NetBeans IDE, MySQL, and using DTrace on Web applications (from JavaScript to the database).

So there, two events next week, in Singapore: MySQL Meetup and Sun Developer Days. See you there.

Here’s a packed schedule. There will be a Sun crew visiting these universities between 16-17 July 2008. Will you be there? Where you’ll meet the rock stars:

• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 9am - noon: Multimedia University, Cyberjaya
• Wednesday, 16 July 2008, 2pm - 5pm: Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 9am - noon: Management & Science University, Shah Alam
• Thursday, 17 July 2008, 2pm - 5pm: INTI, Subang

And what exactly will we be talking about? Besides the keynote, and tech demos, there will be focus on NetBeans (a fabulous IDE), an introduction to OpenSolaris, JavaFX, and of course, MySQL.

We all have 30 minute session slots, and the focus is rather developer centric, so I’m wondering what is best to cover in 30 minutes (what one can probably talk about in 5 days even)? Condensed talk on storage engines, index types, etc. ?

My fear is that I’ll largely be talking to a crowd that has seen and used a database, and its called Access. MySQL will be new to them. Not having a “front-end” per se, ala Access, might be scary. Then again, hooking up OpenOffice.org Base and Workbench might be the way to go for a glitzy presentation…

The next release of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, will have ZFS enabled by default. There’s a good article for the masses, at ZDNet on ZFS on Snow Leopard - do read it.

We all know running any form of server using HFS+ tends to be a bit of a joke. So, Snow Leopard Server will be where ZFS makes its debut. It won’t be long before regular users will want it in their Mac Pro’s and so on…

OS X as a deployment platform for production MySQL servers? This is not far off, I’m sure.

I’m at the Sun Tech Days in beautiful Philippines, and all I can say is the energy is tremendous. I’m hearing there are about 1,400 attendees, and this number might grow tomorrow.

Armed with a video camera, I decided to take a few video snapshots. My first victimguest on my yet to be named videocast is Wen Huang, Product Manager for NetBeans, at Sun Microsystems.

Wen Huang has been a MySQL user since 1999, and had a past life as a web developer in various web shops, some large, some small. One commonality he had at all his jobs though is that they always use MySQL.

He’s an action junkie, preferring to have the latest version of the MySQL database all the time, and can’t wait for MySQL 5.1 when it comes out. Do remember that there exists a NetBeans with Glassfish and MySQL bundle. I’ve also blogged about this before, don’t hesitate to read my review titled NetBeans 6.1 with GlassFish, MySQL bundle.

So there you have it. Go forth, and try the great bundle, as its an all-in-one install of an IDE, an application server, and a database server.

In what I think must be MySQL’s first time in the Philippines, there will be a presence there next week. Well, its not the first time, but in terms of a community/developer event, I think it might be. The Sun Tech Days is happening from 17-19 June 2008, in the Shangri-La Makati.

Besides MySQL, expect great talks on NetBeans, GlassFish, OpenSolaris, and so much more. I’ll be the guy walking around in the MySQL shirt, so feel free to stop me and ask questions. Its exciting for me, as we’ve not really paid much attention to the Philippines, in terms of community growth (and the Philippines is in the APAC region!).

This isn’t a free event (its 1,000 PHP = ~USD23), and registration should still be available. If you’d like to meet up, and talk MySQL, shoot me an email at colinATmysqlDOTcom or reach me via mobile at +6-012-204-3201. If you’d like to help organise a MySQL Meetup in Manila, do ping me too.

As some of you would have recently noticed, I’ve started playing around (I can’t really say using, seeing that its still not a daily basis kind of thing for me yet) with OpenSolaris and NetBeans. Now, Sun is encouraging students to use, review, and blog about these two great products - check out the student reviews contests.

If you’ve not tried OpenSolaris 2008.05, you should probably give it a twirl. Sure, I’ve not installed it on bare metal hardware yet (I’ve been travelling so much, I’m not anywhere near machines), but it works fine inside VirtualBox. NetBeans is great if you’re writing Java, Ruby, PHP, and are connecting to a database - Connector/J for MySQL is shipped with it. If you were trying it out, take a look at the NetBeans+GlassFish+MySQL bundle.

So, students out there, take a look at the Student Reviews Contest. You have till June 6, 2008. There’s your chance to win anywhere between $100-$250 (USD?), which really means a lot of beer ;)

(and here’s hoping we run something similar when MySQL 5.1 is GA… we used to run bug finding contests where we used to give away iPod Nano’s, though I think Visa Debit Card’s are so much more useful than iPod’s…)