MySQL notes from Redwood

I had the opportunity, along with Sarah Novotny, to spend some time with folks from Oracle MySQL this past week.  All I can say is that it was an extremely positive conversation.  The attitude from those at Oracle was that they very much want to engage (re-engage) with the MySQL user community.

This is one of the reasons we started the IOUG MySQL council (mysql.ioug.org).  Given the IOUG’s own history in building positive relationships between Oracle Database users we felt that if we could help organize leaders from the MySQL community and get them engaged with the right people at Oracle in dialog the community would benefit from that dialog.

Kudos to Luke Kowalski and Sarah Novotny for getting this conversation started.

One other question that keeps coming up is our MySQL at Collaborate conference, which is at the same time as the O’Reilly MySQL conference.  Why did we schedule this at the same time as O’Reilly?

Well, I can only speak for IOUG but suspect the same is true for O’Reilly, conference dates are generally set years in advance.  Our Collaborate conference was scheduled well before there was any indication that Oracle was going to acquire Sun.  It wasn’t until we were well down the path of working with leaders in the MySQL community that we realized the dates for Collaborate overlapped with the O’Reilly conference.

So, why bother with MySQL content at Collaborate when there is already a conference?  Again, prior to the Sun acquisition by Oracle, an IOUG survey of its members showed that nearly 40% ran both Oracle and MySQL databases.  So MySQL is an important topic to our membership.

We also feel it is important for members of the Oracle community, which MySQL now is a part of, to begin to tap into the broader Oracle community.  Many MySQL people may not know that there are hundreds of Oracle user communities around the globe, all independent of Oracle, all working collaboratively to get their voices heard by Oracle.

So, coming full circle, we are eager to welcome the MySQL community to collaborate and the broader Oracle community because we know how to get productive conversations with Oracle that benefit our communities.  And that seems to be happening beginning with this weeks meeting in Redwood.