Monday, February 09, 2009

Minnesota MySQL Users Group


Last month, the local Sun office was gracious enough to host the local MySQL Meetup. My attendance has been sporadic last couple of years (57%, apparently), largely due to travel, but this time I committed to giving a talk on MySQL 6.0 and Falcon.

It was a great meeting with excellent turnout--thirty-one, I think, including three from Sun/MySQL.

Benjamin Wood, a systems engineer from Dallas, called in to give a MySQL 5.1 overview, including a nice drilldown on the new features from which I learned a few things myself.

Prior to joining Sun last May, Benjamin had 12 years experience as an Oracle DBA, which gives him substantial database street cred and the ability to speak with some technical authority to Sun's database customers about MySQL.

Following Benjamin's talk, I gave an overview of MySQL 6.0 with emphasis (naturally) on Falcon and the Falcon architecture. I find that there is genuine interest in MySQL 6.0, especially with regard to scaling on newer platforms. As the drama of the MySQL 5.1 launch recedes and the product matures, 6.0's time will arrive.

Several folks expressed interest in trying out Falcon, and I offered to lend my services, including providing dev builds of the engine, after we get the 6.10 alpha out the door.

I had a chance to chat briefly with Marc Grabanski, a local web developer, who gave a quick demo of a sweet little UI that he developed (link tbd). Marc was later kind enough to forward an introduction to Garrett Woodworth and Nate Abele, the project manager and lead developer, respectively, of CakePHP.

Also in attendance was Erik from FISDAP, Jim from Schawk and of course, the usual suspects, Chris Barber from CB1 and Charlie from Carol.com.

The real strength of a user group is, well, users, and I look forward to hearing presentations from other members of the group, real-world stories, problems encountered, problems solved, lessons learned, etc.