MySQL Knowledge Zone

A recent trip to the SCALE Conference raised a few common questions. One of them was: does Oracle does offer a MySQL 5.5 exam ? I hope the links below help all of those that asked and others who might have the same question.

MySQL for Beginners (SQL-4401) This exam has been validated for MySQL 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5. They also offer a   MySQL 5 Certified Associate Exam

Oracle also now offers,  MySQL Specialization Criteria.


Related Press Release :New Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialization for MySQL Enables Partners to Showcase Expertise

Oracle MySQL Developer Days - Germany & France

MySQL is coming to Frankfurt am Main in Germany for a MySQL Developer Day, Febuary 9th.

This developer day has a wide range of sessions and two great resources:  Johannes Schlüter, MySQL Software Developer (great PHP resource as well) and Giuseppe Maxia, Oracle ACE Director for MySQL.

Take advantage of this chance to learn more about MySQL !  More information on the event in Germany can be found here.

Paris France will also host a Developer day in March 21st. More information on this will becoming soon.

Well deserved !

Giuseppe Maxia and Sarah Novotny both have now been awarded Oracle ACE Directors for MySQL !

They both are well respected in the MySQL community and have achieved great things so far. We look forward to seeing what they will do next.

Oracle has MySQL Ace Members up against the wall!

The Oracle User Group Leaders Summit is over and it appears that Oracle has some of the MySQL ACE Members (George, Sheeri, Ronald) backed up against the wall! 

It was great to get the user groups together and we need more MySQL User Groups to attend next year! You can follow IOUC on twitter @IOUC_Conference & http://www.iouc.org/

User Group Leadership Summit

Day three of the User Group Leadership Summit is here and MySQL has continued to have a valid presence from the community as well as the Oracle Team.

George Trujillo introduced MySQL for the Oracle DBA to a very attentive audience.
Ronald Bradford gave a great presentation on why people should use MySQL.
Sheeri Cabral talked on the MySQL Community and user groups. Members of Oracle user groups showed great interest in the MySQL User groups.


So how can I summarize the summit in one line:
Oracle DBA user group members are interested in MySQL and the community!

Events

Take advantage of the events.oracle.com site and get a RSS feed of local events on your area.

Currently :

January 31, 2012   Webcast		Oracle Webcast: MySQL Embedded Online Forum Register
February 02, 2012   Raleigh		MySQL TechTours: Raleigh, NC Register
February 08, 2012   Irving		Oracle's MySQL Tech Tour - Dallas Register
February 08, 2012   El Segundo		You're Invited - Oracle's MySQL Tech Tour Event – El Segundo Register
February 09, 2012   Santa Clara		You're Invited - Oracle's MySQL Tech Tour Event – Santa Clara Register
February 09, 2012   Frankfurt am Main		Oracle Technology Network Developer Day: MySQL Register
February 23, 2012   Kista		Oracle High Availability Solutions for MySQL Register

More User Groups

Day one of the User Group Leaders Conference is complete and day two is about to begin. MySQL has nine sessions including three provided by MySQL ACEs.

The take away from day 1 --- Need more user groups ! Oracle user group leaders from around the world are asking and it is up to the community to provide MySQL user groups in their area.

A list of user groups is available here. This list includes Facebook and Meetup.com groups.  If you are aware if a group in your area please support it. If you feel a user group is missing please let us know.

SCALE

Great turn out at SCALE !
MySQL Day on Friday was a great success. MySQL sessions packed all day.

So far Saturday has had a great turn out at the booth with numerous questions about MySQL.

Tux even gave us a visit.

MySQL Day at SCALE

MySQL Day at SCALE is just a few days away. I will be giving a replication session that covers the concept, different configurations and then goes into the MySQL 5.6 Features for Replication as well. To name a few: Slave tables for replication, Replication Checksums, Time Delayed Replication (my favorite) and Optimized Row Based Replication. The 5.6 Features will include examples for setup, as all features tested with the latest DMR.

I look forward to seeing everyone.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish” ...... but have a backup :)

As we all settle into 2012, I remember the great saying “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

The famous“Stay hungry, stay foolish” reference is from the last Whole Earth Catalog and also made popular via the Steve Jobs 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford, for those that do not know. Computers today would be a very different place without the numerous people that did stay hungry and  foolish as it all came together.  How does that apply to the DBA of today?

Hopefully we are all still hungry but not foolish with our data. MySQL is running most of the databases that power the web these days and we cannot afford to be foolish with that data.  When it comes to data integrity and security we should “wag more bark less.” By that I mean, be excited about the options you have, anticipate issues before they arise, “wag more , be hungry.” Do not be stuck in a “bark or foolish” situation of lost data and tables, downtime, or lost backups.

How many of you have had to recover a critical table that someone, you thought never would, decided to truncate. Granted accidents happens and it is hard to anticipate all of the possible situations you might find yourself in. Which is why you need a stable backup solution. Now, how long did it take you to recover that truncated data?  How long it took for you to be notified? How far behind was your replicated slave database? Could you stop replication and dump the table for a recovery?  This is why I, and many others, are excited about the Delayed Replication options with MySQL 5.6.

I was at Oracle Open World 2011 and I sat in on a few of the replication sessions. During one I heard someone mention, “Why would you want to delay replication?” Live Rolling backups I immediately thought and this person soon realized the benefits. It depends on the database size and activity and disks are becoming cheaper and cheaper for you to handle the logs. Would you rather pull your database off a tape, load it, dump the table then fix what was lost?  I touched on this some before in a Database Chain blog post. With the Delayed Replication option you can now address some of your backups concerns with a live replicated database chain.  Consider this, Server A is your slave, Server B  gets time delayed set to a Day (  CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_DELAY=86400 ), Server C gets 6 Days (So a week back from master , CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_DELAY=518400 ), Server D gets set to 24 Days back (~month from master , CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_DELAY=2073600  ). Now you have full access to historical data if needed. Live rolling backups !

Don't be foolish with data. Of course, you can still dump to tape the pending logs and database backups for a serious disaster. But the option to have live historical data native to MySQL replication is fantastic.

Lastly, To quote from Eric Raymond's the The Cathedral and the Bazaar, “The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users.”  Delayed Replication is a community driven idea and  was entered as a bugs in 2006 and 2007  http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=21639 , http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=22072,  http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=28760  then entered into the worklogs in 2010 WL#344: Time-delayed Replication.

More data on this topic:
http://www.clusterdb.com/mysql-replication/delayed-replication-in-mysql-5-6-development-release/
http://datacharmer.blogspot.com/2011/01/first-look-at-delayed-replication-in.html

See ya soon at SCALE !  ( https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale10x/schedule )