Friday, December 19, 2008

MySQL Conference Schedule Available

I just got word the Schedule for the MySQL Conference 2009 is now available!

In my previous post, and the one before that I already wrote about my approved proposals. I promised I would post more details on my sessions later on. Well, it's right here:

http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2009/public/schedule/speaker/198

While you're at it, check out the list of speakers. I think it is a pretty good line-up, and I am looking forward to seeing the talks, and meeting these people. I've seen quite a few interesting things and I'll compile a list later on of the talks that caught my special attention.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

"Starring Sakila": a Data Warehousing mini-tutorial at the MySQL UC 2009

Hi!

Recently I wrote about how glad I was to see two of my proposals for the upcoming MySQL Conference approved.

I am absolutely thrilled to see my third proposal has been approved as well: "Starring Sakila: data warehousing explained, illustrated and subtitled". I'm very proud to announce that I'm doing this talk together with Matt Casters, chief data integration of Pentaho and creator of the popular ETL/Data Integration suite Kettle (a.k.a Pentaho data integration).

During this 45-minute seminar, Matt and I will take the Sakila sample database and explain how to design and load a data warehouse for it, and how to use that to create those reports and charts that makes the managers smile ;-). Along the way, we'll explain often uttered terms and concepts such as dimensional model, denormalization, star schema, OLAP, data staging, business intelligence, ETL and data integration.

Note that this session is targeted at SQL developers, DBAs and tech-savvy analysts ('suits' are most welcome) that are new to business intelligence and datawarehousing. We noticed that although data warehousing and business intelligence are hardly new topics, there is still a lot of confusion surrounding them. The goal of this session is mainly to explain what it is all about, and to immediately make the concepts we cover tangible by illustrating it using a database schema which is easy to grasp, and which already familiar to most of the MySQL crowd.

Of course - the MySQL User's conference will feature more advanced data warehousing and business intelligence session too. I am pretty sure we will see a lot of Infobright and Kickfire. One session that I know will be very interesting is Matt's talk on utilizing computing clouds to power highly performing, scalable ETL processes.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to it. I will post a more detailed overview of the content of this and the other sessions I'm involved in when the conference date is nearing.

Video

A video recording of this session can be found here, courtesy of Sheeri.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Speaking at the MySQL Conference 2009

I am very proud to announce that so far, two proposal I submitted for the MySQL Conference 2009 have been approved! Wohoo!

(Did you submit a proposal too, and you still didn't receive a reply? No worries - there is a massive amount of proposals to go through. From past years experience I can say - Don't despair, just have some patience. It can take some time for the MySQL community guys to work though all the proposals.)

As every year, I am looking forward to this event a lot, and having the opportunity to speak there just brings a big smile to my face ;)

Anyway - These are the approved proposals:

  • Gearing up MySQL: Implementing MySQL synchronization for browser-based apps using an embedded database (powered by Google Gears)

  • Practical MySQL Plugin Development



The first proposal is for a 45 minute seminar on how to effectively use a client side embedded database in browser applications, and how to synchronize that local data to a remote mysql server. It is focussed on Google Gears, but the principles and approach is equally applicable to a HTML 5 compliant implementation of a browser embedded SQL database (such as Safari).

The second proposal is for a 3 hour tutorial. The aim is to do a hands-on tutorial on the basics of MySQL plugins that is suitable even for those that have no prior C/C++ skills. Yeah, it may sound ambitious, but last year I did a UDF tutorial along the same lines, and that seemed to work out pretty good. I am very lucky to be doing this one together with Sergei Golubchik, one of the MySQL Server devs that has seen every corner of the server, and who actively architects the plugin API. Really - if you want to learn about plugins, don't miss your chance to learn it at the conference.

I will most likely provide some more details on the sessions later on, but feel free to post a comment in case you want to know more.

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