Installing MySQL 5.1.30 using MOCA

MySQL 5.1 is GA with the 5.1.30 Release

MySQL 5.1.30 is the GA version of the MySQL 5.1 software version. The 5.1 release has some key features that users are going to like which include:

• Table and Index Partitioning
• Row-based and Mixed Replication
• The embedded libmysqld library
  
• Improved XML features with additional XPath support
  
• Event Scheduler
• Upgraded Advisors for the MySQL Enterprise Monitor
• mysqlslap - a load emulator is pat of the MySQL distribution software
• Server Log Tables - have more flexbility and more dynamic capability
  
• MySQL Cluster - is a separate distribution from the MySQL 5.1 distribution. MySQL Cluster 6.2 and 6.3 can be installed separately.
• The mysql_upgrade program offers a much easier upgrade process.
  

MySQL Optimal Configuration Architecture

The MySQL Optimial Configuration Architecture (MOCA) is a set of guidelines and best practices I developed to achieve the following goals:

• Minimize points for failure.
• Support multiple software installs on the same machine.
• Support multiple database servers on the same machine.
• Separate software files, data files, binary logs and administration files.
• Reduce down time.
• Reduce administration costs.
• Provide a consistent configuration platform across an enterprise.
  
• Separate database configuration files from operating system configuration files.
  

MOCA should not be used as a first time installation. Do not use MOCA until you are very comfortable with configuring MySQL and have a solid understanding of the operating system you are working with. The default MySQL installation is designed to take minimal resources and to install very easily. MOCA is designed to be a robust flexible install for MySQL production environments.

Installing MySQL: Linux, Solaris, MacOS

One of the benefits of the MOCA installation is this set of guidelines provides a very consistent install on different Linux and Unix operating systems. There are a few subtle differences such as how to add a new user on MacOS versus adding a user on Linux/Unix. This installation will demonstrate a MOCA installation on the Mac OS. These steps can also be used to perform an installation on Linux or Unix system.

Installing MySQL 5.1.30 on Mac OS 10.5

These instructions will walk you through a 5.1.30 installation of MySQL using MOCA on the Mac OS 10.5. These instructions can be followed for any MySQL 5.1.xx install. The Mac OS installation will be similar to a Solaris or Linux installation. Go to the MySQL documentation to review instructions if you are using a different operating system.

Review my blog entry "The MySQL Optimial Configuration Architecture" for more details on MOCA.

Be careful

Make sure you understand exactly what commands you are running and where you are running these commands from. If you are new to Unix/Linux be extremely careful before executing the following steps. If you are not sure of a command do not run it without reviewing the documentation. Use the man pages or look at other documentation to verify what you are doing. These steps are an overview to show the main steps for a simple installation. Spend sufficient time reviewing each of these steps and make appropriate changes for your environment.

Installation Summary
The following list outlines the steps performed to install MySQL on Mac OS. I recommend reading the blog "Top Ten Things to do before installing MySQL" further down on this site before beginning this installation.

1. Setup the mysql operating system user id. Define the user's home directory, default shell, password, etc. It may be easier to delete the preinstalled mysql user and recreate it.
   
2. Set up the operating system and directory structures (physical storage) for running MySQL. Change all directories where MySQL files will reside to be owned by the mysql user.
   
3. Login in as the mysql operating system user and perform the installation and configuration as the mysql user.
   
4. Install the MySQL software in the MYSQL_HOME directory.
5. Create a startup file (my.cnf). Set up the locations for all mysql database files.
   
6. Run the mysql_install_db script to set up the MySQL data directory.
7. Start the MySQL server instance by running mysqld_safe.
8. Test the MySQL Server instance by running the perl script mysql-test-run.pl.
9. Secure the mysql password environment with the mysql_secure_installation script.
10. Login in using the mysql client and verify the installation. Review the data files, log files, binary log, error logs, etc.
11. Define a server startup method. The script mysql.server is a likely option.
12. Define a backup and recovery strategy. Test your back and recovery processes.
13. Have fun with MySQL. :)

Installation Environment
Hardware: MacBook Pro laptop , 2GB of memory, dual core
Operating System: Mac OS 10.5.5
Disk: 160 GB
MySQL: RC 5.1.30 for Mac OS X (TAR packages)

Preinstallation steps:

Check to see if there is a previous MySQL installation. A MySQL installation often comes with a MacOS, Linux and Solaris system. Verify an older version of MySQL is not currently running. Remove all previous mysql files or use RPMs to deinstall any previous MySQL installation for Unix platforms.
Remove any mysql files in the following directories (especially any my.cnf files):
/etc
/etc/mysql
/usr/local/mysql
~mysql

Verify the setup of the mysql operating system user account. A mysql user may already exist in the /etc/passwd file. It's probably easiest to drop and recreate the mysql user. Mac OS did something weird with the mysql user in 10.5 by naming it _mysql. Dropping the user and recreating is as mysql cleans up a lot of little issues. Go to System Preferences | Accounts and drop the mysql user and recreate it. Make sure and set the proper group name, login shell, etc. for the new mysql user account.

Dependent on the default shell you pick for the mysql user (bash, ksh, etc) set the following environmental variables in the mysql user's profile file (ex: .bash_profile).

export MYSQL_BASE=/opt/mysql
export MYSQL_HOME=$MYSQL_BASE/5.1.30
PATH=$PATH:$MYSQL_HOME/bin

Define the directory structure for the MySQL environment:
Bring up a terminal window as the root or administrator userid.

Use the mkdir command to create the directories listed below. I have added little notes about the purpose of each of these directories. Do not include the notes when you type the commands.
Create the directory /opt/mysql for placing the MySQL software.
# mkdir -p /opt/mysql/software

Go to http://dev.mysql.com and choose the MySQL softwware to download (mysql-5.1.30-osx10.4-i686.tar.gz). Place this zip file in the /opt/mysql directory.

# mkdir -p /db01/mysql/mysql01/data # MySQL data directory
# mkdir -p /db02/mysql/mysql01/binlogs # location of binary log files

# mkdir -p /db03/mysql/mysql01/ # administration directory HOME and location of PID file

# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/startup # location of my.cnf files
# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/run # location of socket file
# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/errors # location of error file
# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/logs #location for general and slow logs
# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/scripts # administration scripts
# mkdir /db03/mysql/mysql01/sql # generic sql code

# mkdir -p /db04/mysql/mysql01/backups # backup files

# mkdir /db04/mysql/mysql01/exports # exports

# mkdir /db04/mysql/mysql01/misc # miscellaneous backups (single tables, etc)

Set permissions for the MySQL directory structure

Go to each of these parent directories and change the owner and group to mysql. The operating system userid root password will be your main Mac OS password for your administrator. Make sure you are in the right directory before running any recursive command. If you are in the wrong directory you could mess up your operating system. Execute the pwd command to make sure you are in the right directory.
Login as your administrator userid or root userid to run the following commands. Be extremely careful you do this correctly!

# chown -R mysql:mysql /db01 /db02 /db03 /db04 /opt/mysql

Set up the MySQL software
Do NOT perform the MySQL installation as the root or OS admin user. Login in as the mysql operating system user id and verify.
# su - mysql
$ who am i
mysql ttyp1 Nov 10:19

Go to the /opt/mysql directory then run the following commands to set up the MySQL HOME directory (MYSQL_HOME).
The symbolic link will set /opt/mysql/5.1.30 as the software location for MySQL.
$ cd /opt/mysql
$ tar zxvf mysql-5.1.30-osx10.4-i686.tar.gz

Create a new my.cnf file

Create a new my.cnf file from one of the sample files in the $MYSQL_HOME/support-files.
$ cd $MYSQL_HOME
$ cp ./support-files/my-small.cnf my.cnf

Add the following parameters to the my.cnf file.

Go ahead and use the default socket location to complete the installation. Once the installation is complete, it is recommended to move the socket to the location displayed below. Be careful when moving the my.cnf to its own location. It is a recommended best practice but make sure all mysql programs can find the configuration file.

[mysqld]
basedir=/opt/mysql/5.1.30
datadir=/db01/mysql/mysql01/data
log-bin=/db02/mysql/mysql01/binlogs/mysql01-bin
log-error=/db03/mysql/mysql01/errors/mysql01.err
pid-file=/db03/mysql/mysql01/localhost.pid
#socket=/db03/mysql/mysql01/run/mysql01.sock

[client] # global options for every client:
#socket=/db03/mysql/mysql01/run/mysql01.sock


Setup the MySQL environment

# Setup the mysql data directory. Make sure you are logged in as the mysql OS userid. When done go to the /db01/mysql/mysql01 directory and make sure it is setup correctly. If this is your first time setting up MySQL on Unix/Linux you may want to keep the my.cnf file in the /opt/mysql/5.1.30 directory. This default location will avoid having to specify the location of the my.cnf file.

$ cd /opt/mysql/5.1.30
$ scripts/mysql_install_db --defaults-file=/db03/mysql/mysql01/startup/my.cnf
$ cd /db01/mysql/mysql01/data
$ ls -la

Start the MySQL daemon using the new startup my.cnf file.

There are multiple ways to start up and shutdown a MySQL server. Below I use the mysqld_safe and mysqladmin commands.

$ cd /opt/mysql/5.1.30
$ bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/db03/mysql/mysql01/startup/my.cnf &
$ ln -s /db03/mysql/mysql01/startup/my.cnf my.cnf

Test the MySQL daemon with mysql-test-run.pl and review the output.
This test is optional. The script takes a long time to run. :)

$ cd /opt/mysql/5.1.30/mysql-test
$ perl mysql-test-run.pl > mysql-test-run.output

The mysqladmin command can be used to shutdown the database server.
$ mysqladmin -uroot -p shutdown

Login to the mysql server and secure the password environment.
# Login to mysql and see that no passwords have been setup yet.
$ mysql -uroot
mysql> select host, user, password from user;
mysql> quit

# Run the following script and set the values listed below. When prompted enter new password for the mysql database userid. Do NOT set this to the same value as the operating system userid mysql.
$ mysql_secure_installation
Set root password? [Y/n] y
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

#Login to your new mysql server environment. Never type a database password on an operating system prompt. Verify a password now exists for the mysql userid on the localhost.
$ mysql -uroot -p
mysql> select host, user, password from mysql.user;

Post Installation Steps
Login in using the mysql client and verify the installation. Review the data files, log files, binary log, error logs, etc. Make sure you are comfortable with the new environment.

Define a server startup method. The script mysql.server is a likely option. Test the startup and shutdown processes.

Define a backup and recovery strategy. Test your back and recovery processes.

Remember there are the following userids in this environment:

• root - Linux/Unix operating system user id.
• root - MySQL database user id.
• mysql - Linux/Unix operating system user id.

Installing the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle

Installing the MySQL GUI tools should be installed with the .DMG file on Mac. The nice thing is it is a three click install: 1) Click to download the GUI Tools .DMG file from the dev/mysql.com site 2) Click to open the file on the Mac OS. 3) Click to move it into the Applications directory for Mac.

This is the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle which includes the following:

• MySQL Administrator
  
• MySQL Query Browser
  
• MySQL Migration Toolkit (currently not available for Mac OS in bundle)
  

Once you install the MySQL GUI Tools bundle for the Mac OS, run the .dmg file. It will ask you to drag the MySQL Tools icon to the Applications directory. After dragging the icon to the applications directory, go the the applications directory using Finder.

Before launching the MySQL Administrator or Query Browser, if you are using a non-default sock, click on advanced options on the login screen and enter the socket file you defined in your my.cnf file. Then login to either of these two tools.

Conclusion
These instructions walk through the basic steps for setting up a MySQL server on a Mac OS. Remember this article discusses a basic install. It does not include setting up memory, InnoDB server parameters, etc. This will allow you to have fun in the documentation. :)

Have fun with MySQL. :)

Why use Second Life? What's so great about it?

As organizations become more global and virtual, there is an increased need to find better ways for people to collaborate and work together virtually. Today we have wikis, IRC, Skype, messaging and webcasts, but none of these methods do a good job of creating great interaction, collaboration, camaraderie, friendships as meeting in person. For example, I recently had to work with someone on organizing a number of database training sessions at a conference to prepare people for certification. We used email, IRC and Skype to collaborate on ideas. A few weeks later we met in person. During the two hour dinner we came up with more ideas, communicated more effectively, built a stronger working relationship and friendship. We kept building on ideas each other had and after the dinner we both agreed we accomplished more in two hours meeting in person than we ever could have accomplished using any of the above mentioned communication methods.

Organizations and people are required to work more virtually and remotely which has a tremendous impact on communication. While doing nothing to address the lack of social interaction and how this impacts people. So what do we do when we can not meet directly with people? Virtual reality and virtual worlds using avatars are a new method organizations are looking into to have virtual environments communicate more effectively. Second Life is the virtual environment I have been working with. Sun Microsystems, IBM, Cisco and a large number of fortune 1000 companies and universities are building large virtual environments. On the Sun Islands in Second life an avatar's conduct is held to the same standards as if a Sun employee, parter or customer was at a Sun Microsystems office.

Below are some thoughts and experiences I have found in second life.

• If you look at how far people stand from each other in real life, when working with avatars studies have shown that avatars stand the same distance from each other when having a conversation as in real life.
• I was waiting for a meeting to start and in the virtual world it was raining. My avatar was in a virtual world standing in virtual rain. However it started to bother me that I was standing in the rain and I ended up moving my avatar inside. I felt this interesting because it bothered me that I was uncomfortable standing in virtual rain. I should not have cared.
• Children, teenagers and adults are learning to work together differently in real life. If you look at webkinz, World of Warcraft, Madden Football, these are extremely popular games that allow someone to experience virtual reality. Even Barnes and Noble is moving to avators. What people often miss is that these virtual environments are changing how people think, learn and interact with each other.
• If your avatar is struck, knocked down or bumped into, someone will have a similar mental response as if they would in real life.
• Organizations are finding they can train people more effectively and at greatly reduced costs using avatars and virtual reality.
  

Working with other avatars in virtual worlds creates friendships, stronger working relationships and more collaboration and exchange of ideas than any other electronic method of communication we have today. I can often communicate with you more effectively with much higher results than if I was working with you in real life. Let me give you a few examples:

• What if I was trying to get you certified to repair jet engines? I would need a jet engine, lots of spare parts, tools and space to teach you. What if I instead build a jet engine in virtual reality. In virtual reality we could rotate the entire jet engine in a few seconds. In the virtual world we could how you how to take parts off, look at them three dimentionally, and put new parts on. The cost savings and effectiveness of this approach would be incredible. What if you wanted to work extra hours or on weekends to prepare for your certification? You could do this easily in a virtual world. This same approach could be used to teach brain surgery or anything else. Now obviously this does not replace real life interaction but this can be a cost effective and powerful way of training and communicating with people.
• Virtual reality has been used as a strong therapy for people who have been disabled and can no longer walk or get out of the house easily.
• Schools are using virtual reality to take students to Mexico and visit the Aztec ruins, ancient Greece and transport to all kinds of historical worlds. Virtual reality has been shown to be an excellent method to get kids interested in exploring and imagining different worlds and cultures.
  
• If you were a martian and teleported instantly everywhere you would have no need for a vehicle like an automobile. Well what if I tried to explain to you what an automobile was if you had no point of reference? If you were on Mars and I was on Earth, I'm not sure Skype, IRC, Powerpoints or a wiki would be effective. What if instead I was able to show you in a virtual world a three dimensional automobile. What if I could virtually show you the moving parts of a car and how it operates. Then showed someone getting in a vehicle, starting it and driving around. I believe this virtual method of communication could be very effective.

Now because virtual worlds and avatars look like a game people do not respect its communication potential. They think virtual worlds are only for playing, people that have a lot of spare time on their hands or a waste of time. Well hear are two examples:

• When telephones were first developed a leading scientific magazine of the time said the phone was a play toy for the rich. The magazine said it would be too expensive to run phone lines all over a city (let alone a country) and phones were just a fad.
• When the internet first came out a lot of leading technical journals said it was a toy, was used for porn, you could meet bad people on it and was a waste of time. No one at that time could have imagined, caller id, GPS, email or text messaging, itunes, paying for things with your cell phones, cameras on phones or how small phones could be.

In the next few years, I believe we are going to see a tremendous evolution of technology of virtual worlds and as we communicate more globally the need for stronger and more effective communication will continue to grow.

Top Ten Keys to Delivering a Great Presentation

Here is my list of top ten things to do to deliver a great presentation.

1. Make sure you properly prepare your presentation.
   
2. Create a great first impression in the first ten seconds.
   
3. Show enthusiasm and energy for your topic.
4. Speak to the audience. Use the works "I", "you", "we" to engage the audience.
5. Make eye contact with individuals throughout the presentation. Make each person feel as if you are talking to them.
6. Break your presentation into different pieces. First five minutes, last five minutes, then break the rest of your presentation into 5-10 minute sections.
7. Use variety: telling a story, visual aids, props, music, sound. Make sure you use your props wisely.
8. Good body posture and movement.
9. Audience will care more about what you say versus what is in your slides or presentation materials.
10. Have fun and make sure you use your "own" style not someone else's style.
    

Being a "Great" Presenter

Being an excellent presenter is one of the most important skills you need to have to be successful in your career. Excellent presenters:

• Make more money.
• Have larger social and business networks.
• Have more opportunities brought to them.
• Have more opportunities to positively impact other people.

At the same time, when lists of top fears are shown, public speaking is always number one on the list of top fears. Public speaking is always at the top of the list ahead of cancer, dying in a plane crash, etc. There are so many excellent ways to develop your public speaking.

• Starting small at a local ToastMasters would be a great way to meet others that present.
• Practice giving a ten minute presentation and video taping your presentation is a good way to practice privately.
• There are lots of great books on developing your presentation skills.
• Joining local business, social and technology user groups is another way to get an opportunity to present.
• There are excellent online resources. Below I have a few sites to look at.
• Watch other people present. See what they do well and don't do well. You can attend local business and social user groups, business chambers, etc.
  

If you practice by video taping your presentation, keep improving it until you see someone you would enjoy listening to. Networking groups are always looking for speakers to present to them. Just make sure you find some ways to practice your presentation before speaking in front of other people.

Here are some good sites for learning more about delivering presentations:

• http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Makes-A-Great-Presenter?&id=8872
• http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/11/03/how-to-give-a-great-presentation
• http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1078.html
• http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/index.php?id=2987
• http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p234839702_Presentation-skills-What-makes-a-great-presenter.html
  

Developing your presentation skills is one of the more important career decisions you can make! Try some of the above sources to develop your presentation skills and start finding ways to start presenting to different groups. The key is to start small and slowly build to presenting to larger groups.

Good luck and I'd love to hear some success stories on how you got started on presenting!

MySQL Presentation in Second Life

I really enjoyed delivering a MySQL positioning presentation in Second Life. I'm in the process of organizing 3D interactive presentations on MySQL and Oracle. As these presentations get scheduled I will be contacting different organizations within Sun to attend.

Sun CEC 2008: MySQL Sessions the buzz of the conference

There were a lot of great stories and sessions at the Sun CEC 2008 conference. The MySQL sessions were some of the most popular sessions of the conference. My focus was on delivering sessions that would teach Sun engineers and partners why MySQL is exploding in the market place. Additional sessions developed specific MySQL DBA skills for Sun engineers. More details can be found at:

http://blogs.sun.com/GeorgeTrujillo/entry/sun_cec_2008_in_las

Thanks to all the attendees and their great efforts during the hands on lab sessions.

Marten Mickos at Sun CEC 2008: MySQL Sessions

During the Sun CEC 2008 MySQL sessions training track it was great to get Marten Mickos to speak to the Sun audience. As I was lining up guest speakers for my MySQL sessions I really wanted to get Marten there to address questions Sun employees have on the MySQL acquisition and to discuss future directions of MySQL with Sun. Marten as one of the key leaders in open source as always did a great job of positioning MySQL within Sun for the Sun employees and partners.

Highlights I picked up from the presentation:

• MySQL has a very large and constantly growing community embracing open source and MySQL. With over 70,000 downloads a day, MySQL continues to increase its user base and popularity. This popularity opens up more and more opportunities for MySQL Enterprise licenses and Sun products.
  
• MySQL Enterprise licenses are a lot easier to understand and at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions.
• MySQL's objective is to be "fast", "reliable" and "easy to use" versus trying to be feature crazy.
• MySQL is not trying to compete directly against Oracle in the large Oracle OLTP environments. MySQL excels in web environments for very fast read performance is critical.
  
• How MySQL generates revenue today and how revenue will continue to grow as a Sun product.
• Where MySQL is today and where it is going.

Thanks Marten for the great job of showing Sun employees and partners the direction and future of MySQL.

Sun CEC 2008: November 10, 2008

This morning started with a nice breakfast and the opening general session. Key speakers include:

• Daniel J. Berg - CTO Global Sales and Services and VP of EM Systems Engineering
• Peter Ryan - Execute VP Global Sales and Services
• Jonathan Schwartz - CEO and President
• Hal Stern - Senior VP Systems Engineering

Highlights from the General Session

Open source is disruptive technology. Open source is putting pressure on proprietary companies.

Sun is almost a cult versus just a company. Today, Sun has a great story with open source. Customers can achieve tremendous savings by using Sun open source solutions.

Monetization of MySQL acquisition
Very important for Sun to be able to sell out of their traditional base. MySQL opens tremendous new opportunities for Sun. From Eric Schmidt (CEO at Google), "When you look at Google, our products are our ads". At Sun, storage, ZFS, Java, MySQL and their incredible popularity are ads for Sun. An extremely large customer said the proprietary vendors are absolutely killing their IT budget, so they are moving to MySQL to change their history of paying unbelievable amounts of money to proprietary vendors. MySQL is constantly proving their ability to disrupt the industry by saving customers large amounts of money.

Takeaway messages from Jonathan:

• "Please have fun when you come to work."
• "Be active with customers about our products."
• "Now is the time to be talking to customers about what Sun is doing."

Quote: "At Sun, We are innovators, we create the future. At Sun we are not bigger than our competitors, but we are smarter. Our flexibility and agility is a key. Our technicalese is our strength."

Sun does not have the resources and funds to do the massive marketing like IBM and HP. However, the large number of leads from MySQL and turning these leads into sales is a great opportunity for Sun. Part of Sun's future success is due to customers looking at Sun for innovation.

The Platform is a Service

Even in a down economy, there is growth. Cloud computing is one of those areas. Refactoring of applications, horizontal scaling, server consolidation, Web 2.0, SAAS, etc. are all key focus areas for customers. End users are becoming the developer. Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, Google analytics are generating a new level of data generation. Today there are 280 exabytes of data approximately with 10 times grown in next three years. One zetabyte will be added in next few years. Managing extremely large amounts of data is becoming a serious challenge for customers.

The Platform is a Service

Packaging this development environment is important. The platform is a service. Platform services are now being provided by large companies. Infrastructure and platforms are important services. Virtualization is a key for both of these. Virtualization will create new services.

Tuning MySQL, leveraging MySQL, LAMP, SAMP with Sun technology is important. Semi-structured data is exploding. We are moving to a new class of systems. High speed networking with large network storage is very important to customers. Sun's Open Storage solutions are going to change how the industry does business and how it transforms customers business. A simple Web 2.0 model, analytics, with extremely large data growth is a key for customers. "Join the Web 3.0 model". "Embrace the Could, make it real". Cloud computing is the future. Social networks are changing how companies manage their data. Four important areas:

• Systems
• Microelectronics
• Software and Services
• Cloud computing

The evolution of Second Life with Sun and customers is growing. Security around the server, the cloud and Second Life is a challenge for customers.

Sun's ipod?

One of the biggest frustrations of Sun employees is they feel that Sun does not put enough effort in marketing products. There was a lot of discussion on Sun's pespective on how to market Sun products and the role of marketing. When I was at Oracle World, one leading industry analyst told me "Sun's problem is they have great innovation no one knows about and they don't leverage".

What is Sun's ipod? Sun is not a consumer device company. The ipod is a great user device. It's changed how people listen to music. Matchbox, for a dollar allowed kids to have a great imagination experience. The book "Peak Performers" was mentioned. Sun needs to participate in the community to make customers understand how to leverage technology. This is the challenge for Sun.

"Knowledge is a. rare thing -- you. gain by giving it"

Sun needs to show customers how things should be done. Systems engineering and delivery needs to show best practices to customers. Ivan Sutherland and his love of technology was discussed. Ivan has one of my favoriate quotes, "Knowledge is a. rare thing -- you. gain by giving it". Charles Garfield, "People how do something are people that know what do do next". In this tuburlent environment, Sun need's to show customers what to do next.

From Hal Stern, "if you have a great idea, be aggressive, implement it." "Figure out what needs to be done and just go do it". "Courage is what it takes to overcome fear. Fear is perceived risk". "Share your ideas, take your ideas to the market". "It takes courage to challenge the market".

The following areas have been constantly highlighted: open source, networking virtualization and storage.

Second Life rocks at Sun CEC 2008

Second life is playing a key role at the Sun CEC. Keynotes, general sessions and great presentions are all occurring in second life. Second life is giving remote attendees a great live experience of the conference.

Hal Stern will come inworld at 1pm PT today, and 5:30pm PT with his avatar with a pressentation and slides specifically for the virtual audience. Here is the wiki
https://cetwo.sfbay.sun.com/display/VIRTUALWORLDS/CEC+2008+in+Second+Life

Ty Valdez Presenting in Second Life - Understanding the Popularity and Growing Emergence of MySQL

Understanding the Popularity and Growing Emergence of MySQL

Friday, November 14, 2008 8:00 a.m. PST

MySQL is growing at an incredible rate. Daily downloads are 75,000 and growing. More and more organizations are expanding their use of this popular database. This presentation will discuss the growing emergence of MySQL in the database industry. Topics will include:

• Key factors in MySQL's growing popularity.
• Positioning MySQL against other databases.
• Popular features in the MySQL database server.
• MySQL Strategic directions.

The presentation will also discuss upcoming MySQL activities and direction in Second Life.

The Sun 2008 Customer Engineering Conference

I'm definitely looking forward to presenting the MySQL sessions here at the Sun 2008 Customer Engineering Conference (CEC). The conference is at the Paris Hotel here in Las Vegas. The conference starts for me today (Sunday, November 9) with a walk through from 5:00-6:30pm. All the training track managers need to go through the walkthrough. The welcome reception is then at the Paris, Pavilion/Hang Space from 6:00-8:00pm. I am definitely looking forward to the conference getting started.

Complements to Paul Gehring and his team. I think they did an excellent job with the walk throughs for the track managers. Well executed planning and organization meeting for conference.

The welcome reception was a lot of fun. Food was awesome and environment was very festive. Also got some cool chotski at the event. Kudos to Sun and vendors, getting cool chotski was appreciated at the open reception. Yes we do love da chotski!

Loved the new computer bag received for the conference. It's a real high quality bag, and since my old Sun laptop bag broke two weeks ago the timing was perfect. Appreciated getting the nice high quality bag instead of the cheap ones you sometimes get at some conferences.

The hotel rooms in the Paris hotel are fantastic.