MySQL Conference & Expo

As I walked into the Santa Clara Convention Hall this morning, I had to pass by a convention for astrobiology. I tell ya, it wasn't easy passing up that opportunity, but I continued on down the stairs for the MySQL conference. I must admit, so far I am not disappointed that I didn't go to the astrobiology convention instead, though I do intend to find out what's going on there as well.

CEO Marten Mickos kicked off the opening day of the 2007 MySQL Conference & Expo by saying how pleased he is with Sun's recent acquisition and emphasizing the importance of open-source software.

Really, the theme of the keynote from all the speakers starting with Mickos to Rich Green, to Jonathan Schwartz, and ending with Dr. Werner Vogels, VP and chief technology officer at Amazon.com, was that proprietary software prevents problems for everyone, while open-source and free software drives innovation and high quality.

While MySQL was small back in the day when I was first introduced to it, these days that database is downloaded over 60,000 times a day. Eventually, it could conceivably reach the estimated 14 million developers on the planet. MySQL has enjoyed great success, and for good reason.

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president of Sun Microsystems, emphasized that the first thing they decided when Sun made the acquisition for MySQL was that they would make sure that MySQL could continue doing what it's been doing, and what it is so good at doing: developing the database and their wonderful huge community.

MySQL is being used everywhere from home computers to small startups to huge companies like Amazon.com. Like Sun, MySQL's employees are mostly telecommuters. In fact, 70% of them work from home. Of course, employees are not the only developers for MySQL. On the contrary, open-source developers worldwide work on the development of this database, reporting bugs, and fixing bugs.

There were several hundred in the room at this morning's keynote, and I hear there are over 1400 attendees here. While not as big as the JavaOne Conference I'm used to every year, I must say the quality so far is equally good. I will write more later about this morning's keynote, but . . .

Now, I move on to the nitty-gritty technical details of MySQL . . .

~Dana Nourie, staff writer for java.sun.com