The bottom line: As both a community member of MySQL, and a service provider, I am not worried about Oracle buying Sun and acquiring MySQL in the process. There is no validity to the argument that Oracle will slow down or stop MySQL development — it is not possible, with various forks already in heavy development, and it is not probable, because Oracle has owned the InnoDB codebase for 4 years and has not slowed that development down.
My bias
I use MySQL, and want to see it continue to be developed. I work for The Pythian Group, providing DBA services to clients running MySQL. Together with my MySQL colleagues at The Pythian Group, the services provided run the gamut from rotating logs, monitoring, performance tuning, designing and implementing and optimizing database architectures and schemas and queries and debugging problems throughout the full stack. The only service we do not provide is code patches.

According to the official lifecycle calendar at http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/lifecycle/#calendar, active support for MySQL 5.0 (including regular binary updates) will end on December 31st, 2009, which is about 3 weeks away.
Many folks are still using MySQL 5.0.45, as until October that was the package that came with RedHat. That was released in July 2007, over 2 years ago!
Upgrading to MySQL 5.1 is not difficult, though it requires more steps than just upgrading the packages.
There is a list with all the changes made that might affect the upgrade process at http://www.pythian.com/news/1414/new-in-mysql-51-sheeris-presentation/. This includes which variable names have been deprecated and changed, as well as how to upgrade stored procedures, functions, triggers and views so they work properly in MySQL 5.1.

According to the official lifecycle calendar at http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/lifecycle/#calendar, active support for MySQL 5.0 (including regular binary updates) will end on December 31st, 2009, which is about 3 weeks away.
Many folks are still using MySQL 5.0.45, as until October that was the package that came with RedHat. That was released in July 2007, over 2 years ago!
Upgrading to MySQL 5.1 is not difficult, though it requires more steps than just upgrading the packages.
There is a list with all the changes made that might affect the upgrade process at http://www.pythian.com/news/1414/new-in-mysql-51-sheeris-presentation/. This includes which variable names have been deprecated and changed, as well as how to upgrade stored procedures, functions, triggers and views so they work properly in MySQL 5.1.

According to the official lifecycle calendar at http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/lifecycle/#calendar, active support for MySQL 5.0 (including regular binary updates) will end on December 31st, 2009, which is about 3 weeks away.
Many folks are still using MySQL 5.0.45, as until October that was the package that came with RedHat. That was released in July 2007, over 2 years ago!
Upgrading to MySQL 5.1 is not difficult, though it requires more steps than just upgrading the packages.
There is a list with all the changes made that might affect the upgrade process at http://www.pythian.com/news/1414/new-in-mysql-51-sheeris-presentation/. This includes which variable names have been deprecated and changed, as well as how to upgrade stored procedures, functions, triggers and views so they work properly in MySQL 5.1.

OpenSQLCamp was a huge success! I took videos of most of the sessions (we only had 3 video cameras, and 4 rooms, and 2 sessions were not recorded). Unfortunately, I was busy doing administrative stuff for opensqlcamp for the opening keynote and first 15 minutes of the session organizing, and when I got to the planning board, it was already full….so I was not able to give a session.

• Comparing Non-Relational Databases: MongoDB, Tokyo Tyrant, CouchDB by Igal Koshevoy of Pragmaticraft

OpenSQLCamp was a huge success! I took videos of most of the sessions (we only had 3 video cameras, and 4 rooms, and 2 sessions were not recorded). Unfortunately, I was busy doing administrative stuff for opensqlcamp for the opening keynote and first 15 minutes of the session organizing, and when I got to the planning board, it was already full….so I was not able to give a session.

• Comparing Non-Relational Databases: MongoDB, Tokyo Tyrant, CouchDB by Igal Koshevoy of Pragmaticraft

OpenSQLCamp was a huge success! I took videos of most of the sessions (we only had 3 video cameras, and 4 rooms, and 2 sessions were not recorded). Unfortunately, I was busy doing administrative stuff for opensqlcamp for the opening keynote and first 15 minutes of the session organizing, and when I got to the planning board, it was already full….so I was not able to give a session.

• Comparing Non-Relational Databases: MongoDB, Tokyo Tyrant, CouchDB by Igal Koshevoy of Pragmaticraft

OpenSQLCamp was a huge success! Not many folks have blogged about what they learned there....if you missed it, all is not lost. We did take videos of most of the sessions (we only had 3 video cameras, and 4 rooms, and 2 sessions were not recorded).

All the videos ...

Another video from the recent OpenSQLCamp in Portland, Oregon....Earlier today I uploaded the Lightning Talk Videos. Due to the holiday I am unsure when the rest of the videos will be ready. When they are, I will do one blog post featuring them all.

However, I have had several ...

Another video from the recent OpenSQLCamp in Portland, Oregon….Earlier today I uploaded the Lightning Talk Videos. Due to the holiday I am unsure when the rest of the videos will be ready. When they are, I will do one blog post featuring them all.
However, I have had several requests for this specific video, so here is Brian Aker speaking about Drizzle.
The slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/brianaker/drizzle-opensql-camp, and here’s the video: