Cui Bono – To Whose Benefit?

by Sean Hull

When looking for root causes of the recent financial meltdown, the latin phrase “cui bono” seems to pop up here and there. According to wikipedia: “(’To whose benefit?’, literally ‘as a benefit to whom?’, a double dative construction) is a Latin adage that is used either to suggest a hidden motive or to indicate that the party responsible for something may not be who it appears at first to be. With respect to motive, a public works project which is purported to benefit the city may have been initiated rather to benefit a favored campaign contributor with a lucrative contract.” Relevant indeed.

By asking CUI BONO or “to whose benefit” you seek to find the cause not necessarily by direct evidence, but more by inference based on understanding all the possible motives of an action.

So what about in business? When you walk into your bank, and they ask you about and present mutual funds to you, is it with your interests at heart? Well certainly it must be sold that way, or your ears wouldn’t perk up. But can a bank spend the energy and time of an associate to sell you something if it isn’t to their benefit in terms of fees and so on?

Upgrades, software companies love them. And why not, the recurring revenues are very lucrative. But beware the unnecessary ones, whether by contract, or by subsequent sale offering more features then you ever dreamed possible – or knew you needed! Open-source alternatives may give you some leverage in this department, but might also mean more customization and tweaking for your specific needs. It may also provide you with a wildcard when discussing such “required” upgrades with pushy sales teams. As an alternative, your team could dangle the migrate-to-open-source alternative card for some excellent negotiating power.

Cloud Computing seems to be the next wave of hosted computing power. The likes of Amazon and Google offer on-demand computing solutions for hosting databases, webservers, and applications. But beware as those hourly costs add up quickly, and your data collects in a cloud out of which it becomes more and more difficult to migrate off of later. Again, weigh in with “to whose benefit” when reviewing prices and options that seem suddenly better than traditional offerings.

CUI BONO in affect takes the old adage “read the fine print”, mixes it with a little “read between the lines” or even the detective’s “modus operandi”. It challenges us to look for the hidden interests and factors that motivate us in our behavior.

Review: Age Of The Unthinkable

by Joshua Cooper Ramo

The world is full of surprises around every corner. I remember thinking that in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down. Something so big, something so serious and seemingly impervious could never be dismantled peacefully. But then it happened.

Ramo fills his entire book with unexpected and counterintuitive truths like this. Faced with a barrage of newness and change, from challenges of global terrorism to resource depletion and global warming, he looks in unlikely places to find solutions. He challenges us to look to Hezbollah for advice on management and areas as diverse as economics, psychology and history to help us form a new way of thinking about a radically shifting and changing world.

View The Age Of The Unthinkable on Amazon.

Preserving Optionality

by Sean Hull

Larry Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council coined the phrase “preserving optionality” back when he was deputy secretary of the treasury under Robert Rubin in Clinton administration. It was meant to describe a strategy of keeping options open and fluid, fighting the urge to make choices too soon, before all of the uncertainties have been resolved.

In IT projects, I see this type of thing over and over. As engineers, and leaning towards the rational and objective side of thinking, we tend to want to make clear and sure decisions. But unfortunately the field in front of us is often not as clear as we have laid it out to be.

In concrete terms, preserving optionality can mean using multiple vendors, or a mix of commercial technologies, with open APIs, and open-source technologies, but all leaning towards open standards as much as possible. For instance the front end facing systems may use one database vendor, and reporting systems might use another. Yes this may mean the need for more varied expertise in staffing and resources, but also leaves your options open at the negotiating table. You are less likely to be faced with hard vendor lock-in, where the vendor has a clear and much stronger poker hand when negotiating licensing fees and so on.

This may also come into play not just with database or application server platform but also development platform, that is the language your team decides to develop under. Depending on the in-house expertise, and their leanings, you might decide to go with Java, or .NET. It may be that those languages offer obvious advantages in functionality. But what of the ease with which to find experts in that area? And what do those experts cost? And how is that field or corner of computing growing now? Is it staying open? Is their a large community behind it?

Preserving optionality is a philosophy that takes some getting used to. It involves having a sense of humor, and realizing our own human limitations. As Nassim Taleb points out over and over in his book Fooled By Randomness – “people overestimate their knowledge and underestimate the probability of their being wrong”. He suggests that knowing this, and keeping it in mind, we can make more educated, and lower risk decisions, if we take that into account. Preserving optionality means waiting as long as possible to nail down those factors, decisions, or variables that are hardest to undo once they’ve been settled on.

Review: Mind Performance Hacks

by Ron Hale-Evans

The various books in O’Reilly’s “hacks” series have been rather interesting, and quite good. This particular title is chock full of ideas on how to improve yourself, from methods to help you remember phone numbers or a list of items, to ways to improve creativity. There are even mental fitness exercises, and help you be better at decision making. There is also one chapter on math, including a method for calculating weekdays, and using your fingers to do real arithmatic like an abacus. Outside of the math chapter, however the material, and topics are ones which would appeal to most anyone. Good stuff.

View Mind Performance Hacks on Amazon.

2009 is in full swing.  Let’s put the struggles of 2008 and the last few months behind us, and take the downturn as an opportunity to dig in, work harder, and get creative in business. 

In This Issue:

1. Feature: Avoiding Path Dependence

2. Current Reading

3. Podcast Reviews

4. Past Issues

5. Technical Articles

6. Webcast

7. Lightweight Humor

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

1. Feature: Avoiding Path Dependence

Here’s an interesting concept.  Wikipedia defines path dependence thus:  "explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past,

even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant."   In other words once you’ve started down one road, it becomes harder to go with a plan b, the further along you get.

In IT, I think there are two reasons for this.  The first one that probably pops into your head is the financial one.  In IT projects, once you’ve commited to a plan, purchased hardware and licenses, you’ve now become invested in that path.   Not only did you lay out money for those servers and software licenses, but you spent time and money building out the plan, getting the right resources in house, and getting everybody on board. 

But there’s a second less obvious reason too.  In Robert Cialdini’s classic book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" he talks about a consistency principle in human nature.  They did various studies and experiments and concluded that "once we make a choice or take a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment."  In other words we feel compelled to stay the course.

In technology projects this can become problematic.  Chances are you’ve been involved with a project that experienced scope creep, the slow eroding away of the original bounds of what the project intended to solve.  In many cases new requirements are identified along the way.  Given that, one wants to remain very flexible and nimble in the face of expected delays, roadblocks and other surprises.

An example…

I would argue that the web as a development platform has favored those technologies with the least path dependence.  A great example of that is the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl or LAMP platform.  The entire stack is open-source, so costs are limited support and implementation, not licenses.  What’s more with the source available your developers don’t have their hands tied.  Further, the web platform as a whole allows for development on single pages, without impacting the whole application.  The former client/server model with compiled applications would have a very slow development curve and turnaround time for changes + additions, and would never be able to handle the demands of millions of unpredictable internet users.

In other words, LAMP is a success not because of good sales and marketing, it has none. It’s a success because it works, in the real world with all the messiness and unpredictability that comes along with that.  It has very low path dependence, and that gives you options.

2. Current Reading

Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success by Penelope Trunk

Reading Amazon’s Q&A with Penelope explains a lot about why I find her writting and ideas compelling.  She’s had a colorful background, and hasn’t really followed a predictable path.  She calls advice such as "pay your dues, climb the ladder, and don’t have gaps in your resume" outdated and I’d have to agree.  Perhaps it was never the way to succeed, I don’t know.  None-the-less it takes more than that to be wildly successful, and "brazen" is more like it.  In trying times when many people are out looking for jobs, her book is sure to be quite popular.

3. Podcast Reviews

I’ve been trolling through iTunes in the last few weeks, and have found some real gems.  With that in mind I decided to add a new section to the newsletter to focus on interesting, and technology relevant shows that I find.  By far the best one I’ve stumbled upon is Financial Times – Digital Business. 

For instance the September 10th episode of this year talked about Mesh Collaboration, Globalization, and Social Networking.  Definitely worth a listen.

You can read it online with updates almost everyday, and the print edition comes out on alternate wednesdays.  The podcast you can find here.

4. Past Issues

Issue 51 – Stretch Your DB Dollar

Issue 50 – Do Your Dishes

Issue 49 – Things Fall Apart

Issue 48 – Balancing Time & Money

Issue 47 – Change the Problem

Issue 46 – Interests Aligned

Issue 45 – Contractualities

Issue 44 – Gaining Legs

Newsletter Archives

5. Technical Articles

Reliable MySQL Replication

MySQL Replication Pitfalls

Intro to Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository

Intro to PHP + Oracle

Useful PL/SQL Packages

Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Programming Perl + Oracle

6. Webcast

I recently gave a live webcast for O’Reilly and Associates.  The title was "MySQL Replication: Audit, Test & Verify".  If you’re interested in viewing this webcast, the entire thing is now up on youtube for viewing.  I’ve embedded the video into my blog here. 

MySQL Replication is fairly simple to setup for the first time.  However over time it can become troublesome.  Errors can show up in the slave log files, or it can fail silently.  We look at the caues, and also demonstrate how to identify differences, and fix them.

7. Lightweight Humor

The Onion does it again, this time with "Apple Employee Fired for Thinking Different"

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

We’ve always been about open-source technology, integration & mixing commercial technologies such as Oracle with open-source ones such as MySQL and Linux.  As open-source becomes mainstream, and more shops consider moving critical services to these technologies, we continue to provide assistance and expertise for these transitions.  Whether it is performance testing and tuning, benchmarking, high availability or recovery, we can provide services for your specific needs.

Looking for a top-flight DBA?  Visit us on the web at www.iheavy.com.

2009 is in full swing.  Let’s put the struggles of 2008 and the last few months behind us, and take the downturn as an opportunity to dig in, work harder, and get creative in business. 

In This Issue:

1. Feature: Focus on Results

2. Current Reading

3. Podcast Reviews

4. Past Issues

5. Technical Articles

6. Webcast

7. Lightweight Humor

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

1. Feature: Focus on Results

Here’s a mantra, it may be new to some, it may be old to others.  Focus on results, not process.  There are all sorts of ways we can apply this in technology, so let’s look at a few.

Buying new servers? 

Are you looking at the brand, or the what, where and how?  Does it perform as you need it to, does it fit within budget, can you get it delivered when you need it, are replacement parts easy to come by?  What the failure rate of components?  Brand may help you simplify this process, but it also may hide details, and drive up cost.  Not always, but sometimes. 

Buying new software licenses? 

Of course you have to consider the DNA of your engineering team, but also the costs of those new licenses.  Are all those fancy features being utilized?  In my experience, a very large percentage, perhaps 80% or more of the obscure features of a database are not utilized by a particular application.  What’s more many of the arcane optimization bells and whistles, knobs and dials are never turned.  With that in mind, an open-source option may very well provide the same RESULTS for a much lower cost than the commercial alternative.  Beware the team of salesmen in crisp black suits.  Just like when your bank tries to sell you on a mutual fund or two, there must be money floating around to pay for and influence these people. 

Buying consulting services? 

Many have the knee-jerk reaction to ask for rates, right out of the starting gate.  Without knowing anything about the project, and/or anything about this resource’s efficiency, the information is next to useless.  First you must have a scope to know how long the clock will be running.  And second you must know the efficiency with which this person solves problems.  A better gauge would be to talk to past associates, references, or whomever referred the consultant, to find out if they got their money’s worth.  In the abstract did the person (a) solve their business problem (b) do so within, below, or above the expected cost. 

Another tactic would be to broach the subject of fixed fee for the project.  Of course fixed fees involve discipline on your part, when hiring services.  You have to have a good idea of the scope, or willing to ask hard questions about the problems that need to be solved, and get them answered up front.  You also need to be able to stay focused and within boundaries, while the project is progressing, and expect that additional work and items outside that scope will cost some additional amount. 

Time to Upgrade?

Wait a second, hold on there a minute.  Not necessarily.   Sometimes focusing on results even means *gasp* using existing, proven, and very stable versions of software.  In enterprise software, those versions that have been out in the wild for many years aka older versions can often be much more reliable and stable.  Remember enterprise software does not necessarily work like desktop software.  If desktop software has a bug, it only affects one person, and you’ll likely find a workaround.  With enterprise software, many many users are sharing those services, making bugs, outages, and upgrades much more expensive.

The push to upgrade, and get the latest features of course is the course of action the vendor will suggest, or even insist on.  But that doesn’t make it the best for your business.  Even developers get caught up in this, wanting to have the latest and greatest features available, partly so they can keep their skills up to speed, and partly to take them out for a test drive.  But one thing your business does not need, and that is to test drive bleeding edge technologies.  What you need is a solid, reliable, and results oriented technology infrastructure. 

Conclusion

Focusing on results rather then process has its rewards.  It doesn’t mean to ignore process, but on some level to not micromanage something into the ground.  It may also mean focusing on what some technology does, and what it can deliver rather than getting caught up in how sexy and trendy this new technology is. The advantages are there too when weighing consulting services, but don’t forget to consider the whole solution that will be provided, when weighing hourly costs for those services.

2. Current Reading

Fooled By Randomness – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb’s book really resonated with me.  One quote I liked:  "people overestimate their knowledge and underestimate the probability of their being wrong".  It permeates all human estimation of risk.  The interesting thing that he illustrates in numerous examples in his book as that, knowing that we underestimate risk, we can plan for our own bad judgement.  We can add checks that help us with our own fallibility.  This as I see it, is his truest wisdom.  He’s not saying that he has any necessarily less emotional and human relationship to risk, what he is saying is that our behavior in handling risk can be managed, and it is this way that we stand above the crowd.  Brilliant stuff, and highly recommended reading.

3. Podcast Reviews

I’ve been trolling through iTunes in the last few weeks, and have found some real gems.  With that in mind I decided to add a new section to the newsletter to focus on interesting, and technology relevant shows that I find.  By far the best one I’ve stumbled upon is Financial Times – Digital Business. 

For instance the September 10th episode of this year talked about Mesh Collaboration, Globalization, and Social Networking.  Definitely worth a listen.

You can read it online with updates almost everyday, and the print edition comes out on alternate wednesdays.  The podcast you can find here.

4. Past Issues

Issue 51 – Stretch Your DB Dollar

Issue 50 – Do Your Dishes

Issue 49 – Things Fall Apart

Issue 48 – Balancing Time & Money

Issue 47 – Change the Problem

Issue 46 – Interests Aligned

Issue 45 – Contractualities

Issue 44 – Gaining Legs

Newsletter Archives

5. Technical Articles

Reliable MySQL Replication

MySQL Replication Pitfalls

Intro to Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository

Intro to PHP + Oracle

Useful PL/SQL Packages

Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Programming Perl + Oracle

6. Webcast

I recently gave a live webcast for O’Reilly and Associates.  The title was "MySQL Replication: Audit, Test & Verify".  If you’re interested in viewing this webcast, the entire thing is now up on youtube for viewing.  I’ve embedded the video into my blog here. 

MySQL Replication is fairly simple to setup for the first time.  However over time it can become troublesome.  Errors can show up in the slave log files, or it can fail silently.  We look at the caues, and also demonstrate how to identify differences, and fix them.

7. Lightweight Humor

The Onion does it again, this time with "Apple Employee Fired for Thinking Different"

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

We’ve always been about open-source technology, integration & mixing commercial technologies such as Oracle with open-source ones such as MySQL and Linux.  As open-source becomes mainstream, and more shops consider moving critical services to these technologies, we continue to provide assistance and expertise for these transitions.  Whether it is performance testing and tuning, benchmarking, high availability or recovery, we can provide services for your specific needs.

Looking for a top-flight DBA?  Visit us on the web at www.iheavy.com.

2009 is in full swing.  Let’s put the struggles of 2008 and the last few months behind us, and take the downturn as an opportunity to dig in, work harder, and get creative in business. 

In This Issue:

1. Feature: Hic Sont Dracones

2. Current Reading

3. Podcast Reviews

4. Past Issues

5. Technical Articles

6. Webcast

7. Lightweight Humor

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

1. Feature: Hic Sont Dracones

Wikipedia says:  "Here be dragons" is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the infrequent medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in blank areas of maps.

For many businesses contemplating the use of open-source technologies, it can seem like going into dangerous or unexplored territories.  To be fair if your business doesn’t already have open-source in it’s DNA it probably is a lot like that.  But with the mainstreaming of Linux that started more than a decade ago, more companies are familiar with these technologies than ever before.  There are companies that have based their entire business model on services rather than licenses, companies like RedHat, Alfresco and SugarCRM. 

Now with the recession in full swing budgets are tighter than ever.  Many prospects that I speak with have not committed their budgets for 2009, or are taking a watch and wait tack.   Despite this both Financial Times and the Economist say that not only is IT going to be a bright spot in the economy for 2009, but more specifically that open-source technologies will play an increasingly major role.  Indeed the time to consider $0 licensing could not be better.

For us, the last six months have seen an uptick in companies asking about MySQL, or considering MySQL for hosting some of their data stores.  Typically large companies have a hodgepodge of different applications, all with different database infrastructures on the back end.  Oracle, SQL Server, LDAP, and MySQL all play into this mix.  What we often say to companies who are seriously considering MySQL, the open-source database everyone seems to be talking about, we look at a whole host of different factors.  What type of application will be running on it?  Is it web-facing? MySQL’s bread & butter has been web-facing databases from the beginning.  How large a database will you need?  There are customers these days running terabytes of data on MySQL.  Next, what type of app will be running on the database?  Is it a custom app that can be ported to the new platform?  Is it a commercial app that only supports one of the commercial databases? 

In the end, companies looking at MySQL move peripheral applications to the new platform first.  This gives them time to get their IT staff up to speed, and also gives them plenty of time to work out the kinks.  What are it’s strengths and weaknesses for their particular business?  These are the types of questions you will need to answer before you move more business-critical apps to the open-source database.

In summary, look before you leap. If you don’t already have the skills in-house, consider finding a provider who can bring those skills to the table.  Better to have resources that have already explored those territories, when you venture to slay open-source dragons.

Read more at the Economist: Technology firms in recession – Here we go again

Read more at Financial Times: What IT means to me: ‘Suddenly everyone’s happy to meet me’

Also take a look FT’s Digital Business Podcast.  The Dec 16, 2008 episode forecasts IT trends we can expect in 2009.

2. Current Reading

 Bad Samaritans by Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang is a troublemaker.  That’s why you should read this book.  Despite the title he is not avowedly against free trade, as you might guess.  What he does successfully do is dig through the history of the west’s rise, when it embraced free trade, and when it erected trade barriers, and in doing so sheds a lot of light on where we are today.  The amazing thing is how prescient this guy was.  His book came out before there was much of a hint of the economic catastrophe we’re now witnessing.  He covers in-depth the asian financial crisis of 1997 which shows a lot of similarities to what we’re experiencing now.  The only thing is we prescribed different medicine to the developing economies there. 

I don’t agree with everything in his book, especially his chapter on corruption, which I find disingenuous.  What I will say is I learned a lot from the book.  I found myself reexamining free-trade-no-matter-what philosophy that still pervades western discussion of globalism.

3. Podcast Reviews

I’ve been trolling through iTunes in the last few weeks, and have found some real gems.  With that in mind I decided to add a new section to the newsletter to focus on interesting, and technology relevant shows that I find.  By far the best one I’ve stumbled upon is Financial Times – Digital Business. 

For instance the September 10th episode of this year talked about Mesh Collaboration, Globalization, and Social Networking.  Definitely worth a listen.

You can read it online with updates almost everyday, and the print edition comes out on alternate wednesdays.  The podcast you can find here.

4. Past Issues

Issue 51 – Stretch Your DB Dollar

Issue 50 – Do Your Dishes

Issue 49 – Things Fall Apart

Issue 48 – Balancing Time & Money

Issue 47 – Change the Problem

Issue 46 – Interests Aligned

Issue 45 – Contractualities

Issue 44 – Gaining Legs

Newsletter Archives

5. Technical Articles

Reliable MySQL Replication

MySQL Replication Pitfalls

Intro to Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository

Intro to PHP + Oracle

Useful PL/SQL Packages

Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Programming Perl + Oracle

6. Webcast

I recently gave a live webcast for O’Reilly and Associates.  The title was "MySQL Replication: Audit, Test & Verify".  If you’re interested in viewing this webcast, the entire thing is now up on youtube for viewing.  I’ve embedded the video into my blog here. 

MySQL Replication is fairly simple to setup for the first time.  However over time it can become troublesome.  Errors can show up in the slave log files, or it can fail silently.  We look at the caues, and also demonstrate how to identify differences, and fix them.

7. Lightweight Humor

The Onion does it again, this time with "Apple Employee Fired for Thinking Different"

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

We’ve always been about open-source technology, integration & mixing commercial technologies such as Oracle with open-source ones such as MySQL and Linux.  As open-source becomes mainstream, and more shops consider moving critical services to these technologies, we continue to provide assistance and expertise for these transitions.  Whether it is performance testing and tuning, benchmarking, high availability or recovery, we can provide services for your specific needs.

Looking for a top-flight DBA?  Visit us on the web at www.iheavy.com.

Heavyweight Internet Group provides Open Source Database Professional Services and Consulting to fortune 500 companies. With our low overhead, and focused specialty we can offer very competitive prices. Our value add is simple: aggressive pricing, and personalized service. Please contact us for details at 646.827.9877. Our services include:

• new MySQL & Postgres database setup and administration
• MySQL & Postgres tuning of problem areas
• correcting degraded MySQL & Postgres application performance
• Remote DBA – 24×7 Support Services

We have TEN years of experience working on Open Source databases in all types of industries including banking, finance, education, entertainment, media and government. Our consultants are experts in the field, with published material including books, online and print magazine articles, and lectures. Please also feel free to browse our business newsletter archives. Our monthly newsletter discusses business best practices in Oracle consulting, and Open Source integration. We are conveniently located in Rockefeller Center, and are available for onsite meetings at your New York City offices.

Looking for a top-flight DBA?  We are subject matter experts in Oracle and MySQL, especially integrating these database platforms with open source technologies.

We’ve always been about open-source technology, integration & mixing commercial technologies such as Oracle with open-source ones such as MySQL and Linux. As open-source becomes mainstream, and more shops consider moving critical services to these technologies, we continue to provide assistance and expertise for these transitions. Whether it is performance testing and tuning, benchmarking, high availability or recovery, we can provide services for your specific needs.

Looking for a top-flight MySQL DBA to help tune or troubleshoot your application?  You’ve come to the right place.  At Heavyweight Internet Group we have fourteen years experience identifying bottlenecks in your services and systems, and resolving intractable problems.  We tune, optimize and rearchitect your application as necessary, to deliver you a better site.  One that performs better, and handles all of your customers as your business grows.

2009 is finally here.  Let’s put the struggles of 2008 and the last few months behind us, and take the downturn as an opportunity to dig in, work harder, and get creative in business. 

In This Issue:

1. Feature: Stretch Your Database Dollar

2. Current Reading

3. Podcast Reviews

4. Past Issues

5. Technical Articles

6. Audio Interviews

7. Lightweight Humor

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

1. Feature: Stretch Your Database Dollar

I’ve taken to listening to some podcasts by the Financial Times of late.  A particularly good one which is very relevant to Information Technology is called Digital Business.  It’s a weekly show hosted by Peter Whitehead, Editor of FT.com’s Digital business section. 

The last episode of 2008 is one of particular interest, and I’d recommend it to readers of this newsletter.  In it  Whitehead discusses trends for 2009.  Obviously with the recent shift in markets and availability of credit 2009 will be a lot about stretching your budgets, and making your dollar go further. 

Interviewee Alan Kane suggests that virtualization and going green to save money will both be big trends in 2009.  Steven Pritchard emphasizes Software As A Service, Cloud Computing, and notably open source, will all be big in 2009.  It will also be a year for the public sector, with all the new government spending initiatives planned.  Finally, Whitehead adds that as web2.0 has ramped up it has opened a whole new category of vulnerabilities thus web2.0 security will become a new priority.  He also loves Twitter, and points to it’s recent explosive growth as a trend which will surely be significant in 2009.

Obviously we’ve been talking about open-source for years.  With the heady mix of flexibility, few licensing restrictions, and customizability, it has always appealed to the do-it-yourself side of the IT world.  But as IT managers look to optimise their budgets, I can definitely see how open-source will win even greater consideration. 

In fact anecdotally I’ve already seen an up tick in the number of companies calling us about MySQL in the fourth quarter of 2008.  MySQL has matured from the web-facing mini-database of five or ten years ago to a real force to be reckoned with.

MySQL for those new to the technology, started out as a lightweight, primarily web-facing database.  It’s limited feature set and transactional support posed little problem for the mostly read-only web-based applications it was designed for.  But as MySQL 4 came online, a transactional storage engine named InnoDB was added providing read-consistency, and recoverability of data.  In 5.0 more and more enterprise features have become available, including stored procedures, functions, views, subqueries, complex joins, as well as a whole host of sophisticated caching mechanisms to make data access even faster.  I now hear from clients supporting terabyte MySQL databases, using partitioning and other features previously only available in the more powerful commercial databases like Oracle. 

If I might add my own predictions of trends for 2009, I would reaffirm Pritchard’s forecast of growth in open-source adoption, as IT shops look to squeeze more out of their budgets.  In particular we expect MySQL to be a big part of this.  We’ve already seen shops moving some of their enterprise data to MySQL in an effort to gradually test the waters.  I firmly expect this trend to continue as IT staff & managers’ confidence in the

technology grows, and as familiarity with its strengths and weaknesses improves.  Awareness of where the technology can fit in well, what type of jobs it is well suited for, and how to roll it into the mix without disrupting services will be crucial.

For DBAs all this will mean beginning to look at the technology, and building test and sandbox environments.  For managers it will mean porting small and peripheral applications, testing for performance, reliability, benchmarking, and recoverability.  All of these will weigh heavier as you look at moving more core business functions onto the open-source database platform.

2. Current Reading

Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki

Some like irreverent writing, and some don’t.  Kawasaki’s subtitle is "the irreverent guide to outsmarting, outmanaging, and outmarketing your competition" sets the tone right out of the gates.  I find his writing to be smart and hardhitting, and very relevant.  This new book is no exception.  The Standard has a piece Five reasons why a recession is a good time to start a company.  I have to agree, and Kawasaki’s book will provide you with tons of cut-to-the chase, and get-the-job-done advice.  Highly recommended.

3. Podcast Reviews

I’ve been trolling through iTunes in the last few weeks, and have found some real gems.  With that in mind I decided to add a new section to the newsletter to focus on interesting, and technology relevant shows that I find.  By far the best one I’ve stumbled upon is Financial Times – Digital Business. 

For instance the September 10th episode of this year talked about Mesh Collaboration, Globalization, and Social Networking.  Definitely worth a listen.

You can read it online with updates almost everyday, and the print edition comes out on alternate wednesdays.  The podcast you can find here.

4. Past Issues

Issue 50 – Do Your Dishes

Issue 49 – Things Fall Apart

Issue 48 – Balancing Time & Money

Issue 47 – Change the Problem

Issue 46 – Interests Aligned

Issue 45 – Contractualities

Issue 44 – Gaining Legs

Newsletter Archives

5. Technical Articles

Intro to Oracle’s Automatic Workload Repository

Intro to PHP + Oracle

Useful PL/SQL Packages

Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Programming Perl + Oracle

6. Audio Interviews

Though we haven’t added a new audio interview in a while, we certainly plan to do some new interviews in the coming months.  So please stay tuned.  In the meantime, please listen to our past audio interviews.

In our last interview we had the opportunity to talk with Norman Yamada CTO of Millburn Corporation.

Norman shares with us his experiences providing world-class computing solutions, and the pros and cons of doing it with open source.

We are hosting our podcast to Odeo.  It is a great service, and provides all the RSS and subscribe links automatically.  So please subscribe if you haven’t already.

7. Lightweight Humor

The Onion does it again, this time with "Apple Employee Fired for Thinking Different"

8. About Heavyweight Internet Group

We’ve always been about open-source technology, integration & mixing commercial technologies such as Oracle with open-source ones such as MySQL and Linux.  As open-source becomes mainstream, and more shops consider moving critical services to these technologies, we continue to provide assistance and expertise for these transitions.  Whether it is performance testing and tuning, benchmarking, high availability or recovery, we can provide services for your specific needs.

Looking for a top-flight DBA?  Visit us on the web at www.iheavy.com.