PERSPECTIVES

MySQL User Conference
by Robin Bulanti, April 2006

Same time, same place, same people. That’s how many conferences start to look year after year. What struck us most at the recent MySQL conference wasn’t its sameness, but the larger size of the audience... directly proportional to the length of the lunch lines! As in years past, MySQL brought together a solid lineup of speakers, topics and tutorials to pack each day and keep the interest of techies and executives alike. 

The fourth annual MySQL conference was held April 24-27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The theme was “Scale your Business with MySQL” and, with scale in mind, the conference was bigger than ever – with 100+ sessions and 40+ exhibitor booths (we didn’t get the exact number of attendees but sure it’s available out there). KPR client GoldenGate Software was prominently featured in one of the largest booths at the entrance to the exhibit hall, with Steve Wilkes presenting Tuesday on using GoldenGate and MySQL to achieve unlimited data availability.

We didn’t make the special events, HackFests or Quiz Show, but walked the floor (full of familiar faces and names) and sat in on keynotes and sessions to get a feel for the audience and event. Morning keynotes took place Tuesday and Wednesday, with a lineup including CEO Marten Mickos, Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, and speakers from Business Objects and HP – proving that open source has become serious business. It was Marten Mickos’ presentation that generated the most buzz though, as he opened with praising Oracle as partner of the year, shortly after alluding to free versions from the big companies (presumably Oracle and IBM) as “crippleware.”

Marten is always an engaging speaker – humble, sincere and direct – and this year was no exception. While some still question MySQL’s long-term viability in the market as others release their own “free” or “light” versions, MySQL seems to be saying “Bring it on.” Overall, MySQL is still showing spark and innovation, and still managing to draw a large crowd of developers, DBAs and at least a few executive types.