MariaDB HA MiniFest Wed 24 Mar 2021

Mark your calendar on Wednesday 24 March 2021! Topic: the MariaDB Server MiniFest on High Availability. We have a number of high-profile presenters already lined up, to present the various HA solutions in MariaDB. Our goal: to help you pick the best one.

Role model: The Server Minifest in Dec 2020

The HA MiniFest follows the format of our Dec 2020 MariaDB Server MiniFest on the Release Policy. We start at 14:00 Paris time (CET) – 9:00am New York, 21:00 Beijing.

FOSDEM 2021: Remote energy

You can take FOSDEM out of Brussels, but you cannot take the Brussels out of FOSDEM. Meeting virtually is different, but FOSDEM once again succeeded in invigorating spirits and building bonds between developers.

Picture on top: myself “at FOSDEM” 2021. Missing the crowds, but still getting interaction!

Presentations now live on YouTube

The MariaDB presenters, the MariaDB Devroom organising committee and the team at MariaDB Foundation put considerable effort into all MariaDB talks at FOSDEM. The 24 MariaDB related talks are now all available on-line as a YouTube playlist on https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaJ5BwLUdDZ-JQME9xbO2UD3uvBXnizM1

FOSDEM playlist

Still friends with MySQL

MariaDB Foundation got its first-ever devroom just for MariaDB Server.

Poll: Help steer MariaDB Server

Our first poll is your chance to influence how MariaDB Foundation thinks about where we should focus our limited resources. What is most important for you: that we increase our efforts in fixing bugs? That we take the existing features, and make them faster? That we take the existing features, and make them easier to use? Or that we develop new functionality?

Rate each of the four items with up to five stars!

How To FOSDEM 2021

Your key URLs on how to attend

The purpose of this page

FOSDEM is hard to arrange and attend. Finding your way amongst 8000 people and oodles of buildings and rooms in Brussels is not easy.

Business As Unusual, Part II

On the last day of the year, let me share a few thoughts in hindsight on a year that didn’t turn out as anyone expected. The outcome: Not everyone was as lucky as MariaDB Foundation. The pandemic takes longer than expected, and mixes the deck of winners and losers. Sure, most of us lose, a lot. But the forced break can provide lessons for a better post-pandemic life (and business).

Picture: Sanna Marin, PM of Finland, CC BY 4.0 Laura Kotila/Statsrådets kansli 2019 via Wikimedia Commons

Two early pandemic blog entries in March

Background: In March this year (which sometimes feels like yesterday, sometimes like ages ago), I wrote two blog entries about the strange situation caused by the Corona pandemic.

Thank you, 2020

At MariaDB Foundation, we have many reasons to be thankful towards all of those who have helped us during 2020.

A few sample contributions

We have recently expressed our gratitude towards contributors in our ecosystem, in 2020. Daniel Black explicitly thanked Tencent for their contributions, and Vicentiu Ciorbaru for the ARM related contributions.

On the same note, Intel has given us access to hardware and software to enable builds using Intel compilers, but more on that once we can release these new builds.

Release Policy MiniFest Over

Done! Our first MariaDB Server MiniFest is over. A smaller version of our MariaDB Server Fest format, the first MiniFest was about the MariaDB Server Release Policy.

Where to find the recordings

Should you have missed the party, we have recorded the 3:18:45 hours of Best Bits for you, available directly on https://mariadb.org/minifest2020/. The sessions are also available individually, as linked below.

Presentations by MariaDB

We started off by three presentations by MariaDB:

  1. On Building MariaDB, by Daniel Bartholomew (MariaDB Corporation), with a follow-up interview by Vicentiu Ciorbaru and Vlad Bogolin (both MariaDB Foundation)
  2. On Merging MariaDB (exact title: Ensuring Build Quality in MariaDB) by Oleksandr “Sanja” Byelkin (MariaDB Corporation), with a follow-up interview by Vicentiu Ciorbaru
  3. On Security by Sergei Golubchik (MariaDB Corporation and Foundation), with a follow-up interview by Ian Gilfillan (MariaDB Foundation)

The User View

We continued with three presentations by users:

  1. From a Linux Distribution perspective, by Otto Kekäläinen of Debian, with a follow-up interview by Daniel Black (MariaDB Foundation)
  2. From a Microsoft perspective, by Sunil Kamath of MSFT, as interviewed by Kaj Arnö (MariaDB Foundation)
  3. From a Fintech perspective, by Kamalakannan Annathurai of DBS Bank (one of Asia’s biggest banks, in Singapore), as interviewed by Kaj Arnö (MariaDB Foundation)

The concluding Panel

For the concluding Panel on the MariaDB Release Policy, we had asked all speakers and interviewers to be present, which proved challenging – given timezones spanning from Canberra over Singapore across EMEA to the Americas.

MariaDB DevRoom at FOSDEM

Great news! MariaDB got its own DevRoom at FOSDEM 6-7 Feb 2021. Usually FOSDEM happens in Brussels, but nobody is surprised that it is virtual this year.

What FOSDEM is

FOSDEM is the biggest Free and Open Source Developers Meeting worldwide. I am sure it remains so in these pandemic times. While I will miss all the many social f2f encounters at FOSDEM, I am looking forward to meeting people virtually.

Separating MariaDB from MySQL

For MariaDB Foundation, this is no small challenge. We will have to establish a Program Committee of our own, when we have so far cohabitated with MySQL.