Well, the deadline for talk submissions at the annual O'Reilly Open Source Convention just passed (I hadn't noticed--I blame being busy). It's in Portland again this year, in late July. The folks at O'Reilly have asked me for talk ideas, so I figured I'd pose the question to anyone reading this who might have an opinion on the matter. If you were going to be at OSCON this year, what MySQL talks would you most like to see? What topics are most interesting or in need of more coverage?
- Replication, Load-Balancing, Clustering, and High-Availability
- Benchmarking and Stress Testing
- Backup and Recovery
- Security
- Application Design
- Scalability
- Performance Tuning
- New Features
- Examples of What Not To Do (real world horror stories)
- Why Comparing PostgreSQL and MySQL is Pointless
- ???
The talk lengths are 45 or 90 minutes, while tutorials are either 3 or 6 hours. Feel free to spew any ideas you might have here or mail me.
See you in Orlando?
On a related note, I am speaking at the 2nd annual MySQL User Conference in April. It's in Orlando this year. I already have the rough idea for my talk figured out. The working topic is n Years of MySQL at Yahoo!, where "n" is a value close to 3. I'll post more details later. In the meantime, get yourself registered!
Posted by jzawodn at February 09, 2004 05:42 PM
I would like to see a couple talks on "Backup and Recovery" and "Security". Seems like that was the title of your talks at the 2002 OSCON, but it's always a good topic.
Definitely "Replication, Load-Balancing, Clustering, and High-Availability".
I'm working on a project with a client who is using PostgreSQL now, but we're thinking of going with MySQL for the next generation, based on the fact that people like Yahoo! are using it with replication these days.
"Application Design"
Or the horror stories one, yeah... they're always fun.
I vote for them all, except for benchmarking and backup/recovery (OSCON 2002 and 2003). A constructive "What not to do" would be good. Would be interested in a performance tuning tutorial (1/2 day) if it was offered. Also depends on what's offered at MySQL 2004.
I'll put in a vote for replication, or pretty much anything discussing high availability. I think clustering and load balancing are going to be very important for MySQL very quickly, at least it will be for me using it.
If I could make it out to Orlando, I'd love to hear about security. Specifically, connecting to a MySQL database securely over the internet from one site to another.
In the past, I've passed data to and from databases using HTTP-over-SSL or other similar techniques. But it seems that with SSL support in MySQL, I should be able to avoid all this nonsense and just go directly at the database.
I'd love to heard more about some real world experiences with this kind of stuff.
"Why Comparing PostgreSQL and MySQL is Pointless" would be my pick, because I don't really understand the differences. Heck, I was going to suggest a comparison of the two until I got to that item in the list.
Alternatively, can you recommend a source to help me understand the differences and non-comparability and so on?
Thanks.
Here's an idea, on the PostgreSQL/MySQL lines...
Acknowledging for the moment that this type of emacs/vi conflict is going to happen regardless of how we might want to say "comparing them is pointless", maybe that's exactly what is needed... a session where a MySQL guru (say, you) and a PostgreSQL guru (whomever) put to rest the FUD that each side uses against the other, and let the users who attend come away with a better idea of which platform is best for their particular application or environment.
Might need a moderator of some kind to sit and the middle and have the ability to "cry foul" if either representative was to get too haughty and such, but it might be an interesting session...
I have to agree with derek, using "ImSOL" is a bad idea... Anyway, I would like to see the high availability session. IF I were going to OScon that is.
Scalability and load balancing would be nice to talk about. Perhaps you could describe the architecture behind Yahoo Finance.
Replication and Scalability, with a side order of horror stories.
I'd love to see someone explain the wildly confusing licensing for MySQL once and for all. I am working on a major project for a client and was all set to go with MySQL but a colleague raised the point that if I do that, I'll be stuck paying about $200 per copy of the app we send out even though the app doesn't allow users to directly manipulate databases, it just uses MySQL as its data store.
I read the licenses over. I have a law degree and a tech background. I can interpret them at least two and maybe three or four ways. I have an attorney friend who specializes in tech IP. He said the same thing.
I'm also interested in the issue of why it's pointless to compare MySQL and PostgreSQL because to me it doesn't seem pointless, particularly on the subject of licensing.
- issues with MySQL 4.x and Redhat Enterprise series, in other words upgrading beyond supplied 2.4.9 kernel
- kswapd bringing the system down
- tuning INNODB table types for high volume
- how to handle queued transactions and spinout slow queries
Replication
Replication
Replication
Replication
Replication :)
Use Replication!! There is plenty of information available about benchmarking, performance tuning, blah, blah. Hardly none exists for real production replication and the issues that appear. Defiantly do this and then post the slides / notes to the net.
