We’ll give and overview of MySQL specifically for Oracle DBAs.  Since you already have the requisite conceptual
framework as an Oracle DBA, a quickstart will help you get up to speed with how things are done in the MySQL
world.

Outline

Introduction
1. Installation
2. User Management, Authentication + Privileges
3. Backup and Recovery
4. Replication Solutions Compared to DataGuard
5. Transactions, Query Optimization + Profiling
6. Views and Partitioning
7. Server Tuning and Optimization
Conclusions

Learning Objective 1
Bring Oracle DBAs up to speed with MySQL

Learning Objective 2
Feature comparison between Oracle + MySQL, what’s there, what’s not etc.

Learning Objective 3
Tuning and Profiling MySQL from an Oracle perspective.

Attendee Prerequisites
Intermediate Oracle DBA experience required.

We looked at the technology involved to scale up based on their growth rates, but found it was becoming cost
prohibitive.  They asked us how it could be done cheaper.

Stepping back from the problem, we devised a very unorthodox solution, which upon inspection may seem rather
obvious.  Yet the business had been doing things a certain way for so long, they had not considered this alternate
view.

Outline

Introduction
1. Initial meetings with client, discuss problems
2. Review of database systems
3. Cost estimate based on current growth patterns.
4. Discussions with client, and further review
5. Creative problem solving to do more with less hardware.
Conclusions

Learning Objective 1
Measuring growth of database applications

Learning Objective 2
Discussing business needs, and projecting requisite technology needs and requirements.

Learning Objective 3
Balancing technology costs with business requirements, and using creative problem solving to increase

Attendee Prerequisites
Beginning DBA skills.
Basic understanding of internet platform, client, webserver, and database.

I’ve posted my review of Backup and Recovery over at Amazon.

Paul Boutin’s recent article in Valley Wag discusses Robert Cringley’s declaration of the Death of the Database  that has everyone all excited.  At root is the idea of cloud computing, and the likes of the Google’s of the world storing all of our data, and managing all the dirty messy database storage seemlessly for us.

Yes, I’ll give you that for many applications, and small websites, this will certainly be the future.  Who wants to manage a database for every website.  But for the large clients of Oracle databases, the terrabyte datastores, datawarehouses, Oracle applications, and Financials, the backend datastore will remain a requirement.  This isn’t necessarily because a third party can’t do the job better, or that it wouldn’t make a business sleep better at night leaving the database management to the experts.   Nor is it that security couldn’t be implemented properly, to make the data available only to the business, and invisible to the prying eyes of the DBAs down the line.  No all of those problems are solvable.

The problem is one of handing over the keys to the kingdom.  Take the worldwide GPS system, for example.   Currently Europeans, Russians, and Chinese alike rely on a US built satellite system for GPS service.  Imagine military operations relying on US technology were the US to get into a scuffle with the Russians or the Chinese.  In the end business wants to see their data, if not physically, then confident of where those servers are, and who touches the data, the hardware, the backups etc.

I do agree with Cringley and Boutin that cloud computing will change things, and continue to put pressure on the big database vendors like Oracle, but I don’t think it’ll put them out of business anytime soon.

With MySQL 6.0 out, increasingly we find the full compliment of sophisticated database features in MySQL.  But a lot of the devil is in the details.  Where Oracle has had problems with the sheer size of the codebase, and addressing security vulnerabilities, and other bugs in a timely manner, MySQL has the problem of a mature codebase.  Some of these features are newly available, and if my experiences with replication are any indication, often have hidden gotchas and “features” which are not emphasized in the literature.

The next question on my mind is, how does Oracle’s purchase and now ownership of Innobase impact the above purchase.  It means a direct competitor owns a core component which provides transactional support to your database.  A very good question.

Time will tell, so stay tuned.

The latest newsflash for those who have been sleeping at the wheel is that Oracle is offering support for RHEL called Unbreakable Linux Network.  ULN is basically an up2date or yum network service which will feed you the latest RPMs.  These RPMs have been rebranded for Oracle, but are not a fork or a new distribution.  What you’ll also find as a ULN subscriber is that a little rpm called oracle-validated-configuration is available.  This little package will include lots of Oracle specific tweaks to make installing on Linux that much easier!

For those who’d like to hear all of this from the horses mouth, please read Wim’s Post on Unbreakable Linux.

Oracle’s decided to provide their own support for Linux.  Are they rolling their own distro?  Well actually, no.  They’re doing what CentOS and a few other folks out there are doing.  They’re rebuilding from RedHat’s distro, effectively repackaging their Enterprise Linux distro and in the process testing rigorously, and reporting bugs and issues back, or fixing those themselves.   What’s the deal?

Due to various license requirements with the GPL, RedHat’s distributing Linux must be done as source, so that means third parties can freely recompile that source, effectively using those same tweaks and packaging it up as their own.  Well gee, that’s not fair is it?

I have to admit I’m on the fence on this one.  Honestly folks, the open-source community, of which I consider myself a part of, has been championing Linux, and pitching it to Wall Street,  and big business for over a decade.  So in that vein, hey we’ve done it, and we’re continuing to do it.  That’s great.

It does seem a little odd though that CentOS and Oracle can redistribute RedHat’s sweat and tears.  Or does it?   The logic at CentOS goes if you want support, you can buy RedHat.  If you don’t, you’re free to go ahead and install CentOS as you like.  So despite CentOS being free, Oracle charging a license fee for the support they’re providing, that seems to make sense too.  The truth is that with open-source, we effectively throw IP (intellectual property) to the wind, and let it land wherever it likes.  So if Oracle wishes to capitalize on this, more power to them.

The truth is that the complaints from some camps miss a really important point.  Despite Oracle’s marketing message about making Linux Unbreakable, and Larry’s various trumpeting, Oracle actually does contribute a *LOT* to the Linux community.  Take for example this huge site of open-source projects all by or directly supported by Oracle.   Or another example, Oracle’s rolling Apache into it’s middle tier Fusion product.  Or take another, it’s building of a better driver for PHP.  All of these are very real, very measurable contributions back to the community.

Obviously it’s in Oracle’s interest for open-source technologies to work, as a lot of their customers want that interoperability.  So do I, frankly.  I’ve been working as an independent consultant for over twelve years providing professional services for Oracle and open-source technologies, and making a healthy income, thank you.

I’ll also admit that some of the folks in the Unbreakable Linux team I know personally, and very much respect professionally.  I’ve also met a few of the folks who head up the initiative at Oracle OpenWorld.  They’re all bright, approachable technologists who are as excited about open-source as they are about the Oracle core database product.

I know this may disappoint some of my open-source colleagues, but hey what’d you expect from Mr. “Oracle + Open Source”, hmm?

It’s a short week, so we’ll catch up with you all next week.  Happy Holidays!!

There is a *LOT* of new stuff going on in the Oracle space, what with various new acquisitions, and no one person probably understands it all.

I’ll also say that I ran into an incredible number of new terms which I like to think of as reframing, or looking at things in a new way.  You might also call them buzzwords, so take your pick.  Some you may have heard before, some appear in a new context, and some are old and familiar.  At any rate go ahead,  mull over them and digest:

• information fabric
• information as a service
• service oriented architecture
• what’s the cookbook for doing that?
• oracle by example
• business process management – from order to cash
• extreme transaction processing
• data virtualization
• coherence
• data masking
• it comes baked in or built in
• moving from reactive to proactive
• we can triage their problem
• the democratic, approachable, modern leader
• preintegrated
• comprehensive
• hot pluggable
• go around the corner to find the treasure of an idea
• drinking the open-source koolaid

So long Oracle OpenWorld, see you in 2008!!

OTN has also been podcasting for some time via the OTN Techcasts which I like. We even see some twittering, and meeting with bloggers.  I also see an Oracle user on twitter, and Justin Kestelyn.

Overall I think Oracle’s moves to promote social networking and transparency are good ones.  Perhaps it will be widgets and OpenSocial next, or maybe mashups!!

Certainly The World Is Flat is a powerful book, and a powerful idea about what is happening to our global marketplace of ideas, products, and services. But once something becomes a marketing slogan you know it has reached another level of headiness, and universal application. Folks in technology may have had a particular propensity toward those ideas because of such outsourcing pressures on our skills in recent years.

But hold on, haven’t you heard about the new trend? The world is *not* flat, or so says the Economist, after reading Pankaj Ghemawat new book Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter. I agree wholeheartedly. Granted the pressure to outsource has been felt, but if economic numbers are to be trusted, it is quite small as a percentage of the whole, and now it seems the pendulum is swinging back the other way.

Rob Preston at Information Week argued something similar, that “The new ‘Flat World’ tilts back and forth and does not stay horizontal for long!”

Still it looks cool as a slogan on a stairwell anyway… Cheers!!

As you can see from this photo, they’ve totally blocked off Howard Street.  The video billboard there is at the 3rd street end.  I managed to catch it showing a frame of an open world!

Behind the billboard are tents where the lunchtime cafeteria was, because all the other square footage is now taken by exhibitors big and small.

And wow, were there a lot of vendors.  Even MySQL AB was here, as I blogged about earlier.  Open-source is a huge and growing component to the Oracle landscape now.  Oracle users seem to concur.  In 2000 when I was writing my book “Oracle and Open Source” no one would have believed that.  But the market pressures are working their magic, whether we like it or not.  I talked at length with Anand Pandey, a Senior Consultant with MySQL.  He handed me a very interesting whitepaper “Open Source in the Enterprise: New Software Disrupts the Technology Stack“.  A very interesting read indeed.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

Here’s a longer list of exhibitors at the conference.  I don’t see Enterprise DB there, but anything’s possible.  You will see RedHat as well as Suse, now owned by Novell, represented there as well.  Also if you make it to the conference, be sure to visit the Oracle pavilion section, where there are sure to be smaller booths for the Open Source Group, as well as Oracle Unbreakable Linux Support program.