Thursday, June 20, 2013

The first MySQL mini-seminar in Trondheim was a huge success!

Yesterday, Geir Høydalsvik and I had the pleasure of hosting a MySQL mini-seminar in Trondheim, Norway.

The topic of the day was a presentation by yours truly on how the MySQL optimizer works. Geir briefly explained how the MySQL teams are organized in Oracle, and that our focus is on delivering high quality on time.

We had lots of interesting questions and discussions (and pizza) afterwards. Of particular interest was:
  • How the MySQL code base can be modularized to make it maintainable and testable. The takeaway was that MySQL has invested a lot on refactoring the last couple of years to improve in this area and will continue to do so in both the near and far future.
  • How testing is done in MySQL. The answer was that the QA teams have been significantly ramped up since Sun acquired MySQL. In addition to much more resources to the QA teams, developers are now expected to write unit tests using the Google unit test framework for new functionality whenever it makes sense. Refactoring and modularization of the code makes this a lot easier to do now.

Close to 20 MySQL users attended in addition to a handful of MySQL hackers located in the Trondheim office. The users had very different backgrounds: from start-ups to solid established companies, and deployment on MySQL 5.1, 5.5 and 5.6. All agreed that the mini-seminar was a great initiative and that it should not be a one-time event. Yesterday's event will therefore not be the mini-seminar, but rather the first in a series.

We'll get back to you with agenda and date for the next mini-seminar once the details have been decided.