MySQL Sandbox updated with minimal support for MySQL 5.6.7

One of the surprises of MySQL 5.6 was that the mysql.host table was missing. How did I realize it? Because make_sandbox, the basic installation brick of MySQL Sandbox failed to complete. What happened is that MySQL Sandbox, before claiming success, checks if some key elements are available. One of such elements is the 'host' table, which, unbeknown to me, had been deprecated, and was eventually removed in yesterday's release. As a result, installation of MySQL 5.6.7 fails.

The fix is quite easy, and I released it today. It is available in MySQL Sandbox 3.0.26, which you can get from Launchpad and CPAN.

This fix is minimal because it barely allows you to install MySQL 5.6. However, there are additional issues that need to be addressed, most notably the excessive chattiness. While this release was necessary to make operations possible, I will need to iron out the unfriendliness introduced by MySQL 5.6 to allow sandboxing to continue. Stay tuned: more will come.

My speaking engagements - Q4 2012

After a long pause in the speaking game, I am back.

It's since April that I haven't been on stage, and it is now time to resume my public duties.

• I will speak at MySQL Connect in San Francisco, just at the start of Oracle Open World, with a talk on MySQL High Availability: Power and Usability. It is about the cool technology that is keeping me busy here at Continuent, which can make life really easy for DBAs. This talk will be a demo fest. If you are attending MySQL Connect, you should see it!
• A happy return for me. On October 27th I will talk about open source databases and the pleasures of command line operations at Linux Day in Cagliari, my hometown. Since I speak more in California than in my own backyard, I am happy that this year I managed to get a spot here.
• The company will have a team meeting in Nopvember (Barcelona, here we come!) and from there I will fly to Bulgaria, where I am speaking at the Bulgarian Oracle User Group conference. Here I will have two talks, one about MySQL for business, and the other is "MySQL High Availability for the masses".
• A few days later, again on the road, in London, for Percona Live, with a talk on MySQL High Availability: Power, Magic, and Usability. It is again about our core products, with some high technology fun involved. I will show how our tools can test the software, spot the mistakes, fix the cluster, and even build a step-by-step demo.

See you around. Look for me carefully, though. I may look differently from how I have been depicted so far.

New strength for Continuent

It is public news now that Continuent has three new hires. I am particularly pleased with the news, as we are improving the team in three different directions:

• Services and management, with Ronald Bradford, with whom we have crossed paths several times, first in the MySQL community activities, then as colleagues at MySQL AB, and again in community cyberspace.
• Development, with Ludovic Launer, a senior developer with a long experience in development and software architecture. This is an excellent injection of new blood for our development team.
• Sales, with Robert Noyes, who has worked in enterprise sales for 25 years, and comes at the right moment to reinforce our business in the moment of its biggest growth that I have seen since I joined the company.

Welcome to our new colleagues!