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If you are not familiar with OpenSQLCamp, here's a description from the home page at http://opensqlcamp.org/:

OpenSQL Camp is open to all – sessions have included PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL (and storage engines and forks thereof), Drizzle (and tools such as Google Proto Buffers), DBIx::Cache, Gearman, cloud computing, Unix tips, query optimization, Apache Derby, BlackRay, Continuent Tungsten, DB Clustering, Firebird, CouchDB, MongoDB, Cassandra, Firewater, how to version schemas, Waffle Grid / Storm Cloud, databases on SSDs, and even "soft" topics like the Open Database Alliance.

I am very happy to announce that I have secured a great rate at a hotel for OpenSQLCamp (a free weekend conference for open source databases such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, and NoSQL databases). We have a room block at the Doubletree Club Hotel Boston Bayside at 24 Mt. Vernon Street in Boston at a rate of $149 per night, for single or double occupancy*, for both Friday night, October 15 and Saturday night, October 16. Wireless internet access, which is usually $9.95 per night, is included in the room fee, so there's no hidden extra there. There is also a free shuttle from Boston's Logan Airport to the hotel**. The subway is steps away from both the hotel and the venue (MIT Stata Center on the corner of Main and Vassar Streets in Cambridge). Subway fare is $2.00 each way, so if you stay at the hotel you'd have $8 extra in transportation fee.

You can reserve your room by booking here. You are responsible for paying for your own room. Some more useful information:

Collaborate 2011 is a database operational conference to be held in Orlando, Florida April 10th - 14th 2011. Unfortunately, the O'Reilly MySQL Conference has been scheduled for the same week; however, I am working with the conference committee to make sure that speakers that want to attend both are scheduled appropriately (I intend on going to both!). The call for presentations is now open through the end of September, so you have just over a month to submit your proposals. Experience has shown that the best presentations are submitted well in advance of the deadline -- I guess when folks are time-crunched by the deadline they do not make such great abstracts....Speakers whose presentations are accepted receive free admission to the conference and a speaker thank-you gift.

Firstly, if you have not yet seen the Session Schedule for OpenSQLCamp 2010 Germany, take a look -- great work Lenz! I am sad that I will be missing it on Aug 21-22nd.

However, this post is mostly about OpenSQLCamp Boston, which I am planning. I am working on a good hotel room rate -- hotel rooms in the Boston area are pricey, and I'm trying to work out something at $159 per night or lower. I will let you know if that happens, otherwise we will probably be on our own for hotel rooms.

Today marks my last day at Pythian. I have been at Pythian for almost three years. In those three years, Pythian’s already thriving MySQL practice has grown even more. I have worked with big and small clients alike, across many industries, managed a team of up to 4 DBAs, and learned a lot not just about MySQL, but what my goals are in general.
Though I am leaving, everything I said in the blog post I made when I announced I was coming to Pythian still holds true. Pythian is a challenging environment and one I would recommend to anyone who finds their current DBA environment boring that they should come to Pythian and experience what it is like to work here. I had lunch with Paul Vallee yesterday and we even discussed possible future collaborations (hence the title, a joke that I am “forking” off of Pythian).

Today marks my last day at Pythian. I have been at Pythian for almost three years. In those three years, Pythian’s already thriving MySQL practice has grown even more. I have worked with big and small clients alike, across many industries, managed a team of up to 4 DBAs, and learned a lot not just about MySQL, but what my goals are in general.
Though I am leaving, everything I said in the blog post I made when I announced I was coming to Pythian still holds true. Pythian is a challenging environment and one I would recommend to anyone who finds their current DBA environment boring that they should come to Pythian and experience what it is like to work here. I had lunch with Paul Vallee yesterday and we even discussed possible future collaborations (hence the title, a joke that I am “forking” off of Pythian).

Today marks my last day at Pythian. I have been at Pythian for almost three years. In those three years, Pythian’s already thriving MySQL practice has grown even more. I have worked with big and small clients alike, across many industries, managed a team of up to 4 DBAs, and learned a lot not just about MySQL, but what my goals are in general.
Though I am leaving, everything I said in the blog post I made when I announced I was coming to Pythian still holds true. Pythian is a challenging environment and one I would recommend to anyone who finds their current DBA environment boring that they should come to Pythian and experience what it is like to work here. I had lunch with Paul Vallee yesterday and we even discussed possible future collaborations (hence the title, a joke that I am “forking” off of Pythian).

At Kscope this year, I attended a half day in-depth session entitled Data Warehousing Performance Best Practices, given by Maria Colgan of Oracle. My impression, which was confirmed by folks in the Oracle world, is that she knows her way around the Oracle optimizer.
See part 1 for the introduction and talking about power and hardware. This part will go over the 2nd “P”, partitioning. Learning about Oracle’s partitioning has gotten me more interested in how MySQL’s partitioning works, and I do hope that MySQL partitioning will develop to the level that Oracle partitioning does, because Oracle’s partitioning looks very nice (then again, that’s why it costs so much I guess).

At Kscope this year, I attended a half day in-depth session entitled Data Warehousing Performance Best Practices, given by Maria Colgan of Oracle. My impression, which was confirmed by folks in the Oracle world, is that she knows her way around the Oracle optimizer.
See part 1 for the introduction and talking about power and hardware. This part will go over the 2nd “P”, partitioning. Learning about Oracle’s partitioning has gotten me more interested in how MySQL’s partitioning works, and I do hope that MySQL partitioning will develop to the level that Oracle partitioning does, because Oracle’s partitioning looks very nice (then again, that’s why it costs so much I guess).

At Kscope this year, I attended a half day in-depth session entitled Data Warehousing Performance Best Practices, given by Maria Colgan of Oracle. My impression, which was confirmed by folks in the Oracle world, is that she knows her way around the Oracle optimizer.
These are my notes from the session, which include comparisons of how Oracle works (which Maria gave) and how MySQL works (which I researched to figure out the difference, which is why this blog post took a month after the conference to write). Note that I am not an expert on data warehousing in either Oracle or MySQL, so these are more concepts to think about than hard-and-fast advice. In some places, I still have questions, and I am happy to have folks comment and contribute what they know.