I hope to see you next month in Austin at Percona Live. The schedule lists two rooms of PG talks.
Room 1
Room 2
Percona Live's schedule has very interesting MySQL talks. This is an in person event in Austin Texas and one of the rooms will be livestreamed. Please note there are TWO rooms to chose from.
Room 1
Tuesday, May 17
In March 2020 I attended the Southern California Linux Expo in Pasadena, California not knowing that I would not be physically present at a computer conference for over two years later. When a good part of you job involves speaking at or attending conferences, it is a big shock to suddenly stop. I did participate in many virtual events but there are things about live events that can not be duplicated over Zoom or the dozens of other similar environments.
The Silicon Valley PostgreSQL conference was my first time in twenty five months since I had been physically at a show. Many of the other attendees had had similar gaps. Some of us joked that we worried that our previous ninja-level travel skills were rusty and voiced concerns that they may have forgotten to pack essentials after being a home for a very long time.
The big impact that everyone recognized was the 'hallway track'. This is where you see a familiar face or meet a new acquaintance and talk. Simply talk? Well, yes. Other cases it is a serendipitous exploration of something new. For example there was a discussion on that get written to the logs during a transaction but before a commit that would survive a system crash. PostgreSQL internals are not my forte but it was interesting to have a major code committer walk through the various steps of how the various components work within a transaction. The analog is a homeowner learning how the plumbing in their house functions. These things may be mundane to many but I find joy in exploring new things.
The other big impact is meeting co-workers face-to-face. I am very new in my new position at Percona and had the opportunity to meet a handful of colleagues. We humans are a social bunch and I do not think video meetings provide the full experience of interacting with others. I knew my co-workers were an impressive bunch and that idea was more than reinforced at the conference.
Many virtual conferences had limited ability to ask speakers questions during or after a session. It was enjoyable to be able to ask speakers questions during a lunch break or while getting coffee. Presenting to a screen provides minimal feedback to a speaker and having a live audience brings a needed vitality. Sometimes clarity on a point is needed or a tangent needs to touched. You don't get that from a pre-recorded presentation from either side of the presentation.
I was able to learn a great deal about PostgreSQL and the community at the conference. After being in the MySQL sphere, there a lot of things that are different and so many things that are similar. Meeting people passionate about an open source software project is energizing. PostgreSQL is an impressive database rich with features and is supported by an energetic group of hard working people who are striving to make improvements.
My next event is Percona Live next May in Austin. This is an open source database show that is not specific to a single database technology. Hopefully I can meet up with you there.
Percona Live is back and in person May 16th to 18th in Austin, Texas and you not only need to be there but you need to present a talk to share your knowledge. The call for papers closes March 14th.
Why should you present?
The Open Source database community is growing. As such we need those of you help the 'newbies' get up to speed. We also have a lot of folks leveling up from newbies who need to learn about more advanced nuances. You have something to contribute to your community.
And we have some experts who want to share to help you grow. (see below)
But why should you present?
You have something to share! Did you learn something cool about backups? Want to share how you do capacity planning? Can you explain user account lifecycle management? Others would love to know how you migrated to the cloud, sped up queries, secure your servers, or how to contribute code.
Never spoken before in public?
Well, this is the event to start at! There are five minute lightening talks that are perfect for novices or the shy. The audience at Percona Live is very appreciate and wants you to do well. Five minutes if five to ten slides. There is something (or two somethings) that you can share to help others.
Got a lot to say?
There hour tutorials are a great place to do a deep dive on your favorite subject.
Have less than 180 minutes of information but more than five?
Regular sessions are about fifty minutes (leave a few minutes for questions and answers).
What can you talk about?
Well, the core material is open source databases or anything tangential to them.
Kubernetes, cloud, query performance, replication, devops, programming, and anything else in that neighborhood.
Need help?
If you want someone to review, critique, sanity check, kick the tires, taste the sauce, or run things past then contact me. Leave a comment below, ping me on Twitter (at Stoker), or email me.
I might set up some Zoom meetings where I walk through the submission process, answer your questions, if you think that would help.
And if I can not help you with a subjects, odds are I can find someone -- probably I have met at a past Percona live.
Do I have to attend?
Well, not really. There is an option to virtually attend for those who can not make it in person.
Please attend!
Austin is an amazing city. Lots of great food, amazing museums, and 6th Street is the live music capital of Texas. Nearby you can float the Comal or Guadalupe rivers, see the Alamo (also see the Buckhead Saloon), dance in Gruene Hall (the oldest in Texas), eat TexMex in the Elvis room Chuy's, or savor the many BBQ joints.
Plus at the show you get to participate in the hallway track! Often times at conferences, the most valuable information or contacts you will make will be between sessions. You will make friends, learn fascinating things that may not be database related, and have a good time visiting the expo hall where vendors show off their wares.\
So sign up today!
MySQL Server version 8.0.28 was launched a few days ago and without a lot a fanfare. Which is a shame and I wish we had more of a splash for every release. The release notes are available here.
I would like to highlight some of the changes.
There are over a hundred bug fixes and big thanks to Hope Lee, Casa Zhang, Øystein Grøvlen, Song Zhibai, Facebook, Hobert Lu, Brian Yue, Zhai Weixiang, Murakami Kohei, Venkatesh Prasad Venugopal, and the Tencent team.
The Highlights
This release does not have a lot of 'wow' new features but shows a lot of solid work in evolving the product.
So, please download this new version ASAP.
SCaLE 19X – the 19th annual Southern California Linux Expo – will take place March 3-6, 2022 in Pasadena, CA.
SCaLE is the largest community-run open-source and free software conference in North America. It is held annually in the greater Los Angeles area. A year might have been skipped due to Covid-19 but it looks like we will be back in person this year.
The MySQL Track features nine talks on a variety of subjects from some of the best known MySQL experts.
Dave Stokes - MySQL New Features
MySQL now features quarterly releases that come with new features. So if you do not know about hash joins, replica set, dual password, or other new features then you need to be in this presentation.
Peter Zaitsev - State of MySQL Security in 2021
In this talk we will look into the state of MySQL Security in 2021. We will cover the new security focused features available in MySQL (and MySQL Compatible variants) as well as share best practices to consider for secure MySQL deployment.
Peter Zaitsev - 18 Things To Do When You Have a MySQL Bottleneck
The presentation will be focused on dealing with an unexpected high traffic event as it is happening.
Pep Pla - Forward to the Past: Point in time recovery for MySQL
Disasters happen. Somebody runs a process that renders the data in your database unusable, inconsistent, or just deleted. Wouldn't it be great to be able to recover your database to the state just before the disaster happened?
Pep Pla -- I need some (MySQL) backup!
"If you have a hammer, all you see is nails." also known as the Law of the Instrument describes the cognitive bias that involves over-reliance on a familiar tool. To protect MySQL data, a DBA must have a toolbox full of the proper utensils. To know only one approach is not enough.
Mattias Crauwels - MySQL backup best-practices in 2022
Backups are important for your business! I will give you some best practices on how to do it properly!
Michael Marx - The Great Migration: Galera Cluster to InnoDB Cluster
InnoDB cluster has several advantages when you need highly available data and in this presentation you will see how to convert from Galera for better performance.
Michael Marx - MySQL enhanced with Heatwave
HeatWave is a massively parallel, high performance, in-memory query accelerator for Oracle MySQL Database Service that accelerates MySQL performance by orders of magnitude for analytics and mixed workloads.
Dave Stokes - MySQL Indexes
MySQL indexes can greatly speed up your queries, or doom you database to performance night mares. Learn about the various types of indexes, how test them, and how to use them efficiently.
Hopefully I will see you at these talks in March or at the MySQL Booth in the expo hall!