Robert Hodges: Oracle Missed at MySQL User Conference...Not!
The MySQL UC this past week was the best in years. Percona did an outstanding job of organizing the main Percona Live event that ran Tuesday through Thursday. About 1000 people attended, which is up from the 800 or so at the O'Reilly-run conference in 2011. There were also excellent follow-on events on Friday for MariaDB/SkySQL, Drizzle, and Sphinx.What made this conference different was the renewed energy around MySQL and the number of companies using it.
- Big web properties like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Craigslist continue to anchor the MySQL community and drive innovation from others through a combination of fun! ding, encouragement, and patches.
- Many new companies we have not heard from before like Pinterest, BigDoor, Box.net, and Constant Contact talked about their experience building major new applications on MySQL.
- The vendor exhibition hall at Percona Live was hopping. Every vendor I spoke to had a great show and plans to return next year. There is great innovation around MySQL from many creative companies. I'm very proud my company, Continuent, is a part of this.
- ! The demand for MySQL expertise was comp letely out of hand. So many talks ended with "...and we are hiring" that it became something of a joke. The message board was likewise packed with help wanted ads.
When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems a couple of years ago, it triggered a lot of uncertainty about the future of MySQL. This concern turns out to be unfounded. Oracle does excellent engineering work, especially on InnoDB, but had no involvement either official or unofficial at the conference. This was actually a good thing.
By not participating, Oracle helped demonstrate that MySQL is no longer dependent on any single vendor and has taken on a real life of its own driven by the people who use it. MySQL fans owe Oracle a vote of thanks for not attending this year. Next year I hope they will be back to join the fun.
URL: http://scale-out-blog.blogspot.com/2012/04/oracle-missed-at-mysql-user.html
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