Prometric MySQL exam numbers; plus watch out for that giraffe on the road

Prometric is beginning to offer the MySQL Exams as part of the Sun catalog. Currently only the Associate and Developer exams are listed but the DBA 5.0 and cluster exams are on the way.

ID	Exam
310-810	DBA 5.0 I
310-811	DBA 5.0 II
310-812	Dev 5.0 I
310-813	Dev 5.0 II
310-814	Associate
310-815	Cluster DBA 5.1

I find myself working while on vacation this week. Originally I planned to give my younger son some 'seat time' so he can practice for his driving test. But he is resting after a frantic day driving the hills and valleys of the Fossil Rim Wildlife Park. Managing an unfamiliar vehicle on poor to bad roads while watching out for zebras, Emus, deer, and ostriches is not easy. There is something about teaching a person in their mid-teens to drive that points out how much experience at an activity brings proficiency. Many common tasks done over and over again become ingrained and automatic. Live avoiding animals in the road while driving or checking on data backups as a DBA. It is easy to forget all the little skills that need to be built to be able to handle a car or a database well.

That reminds me of the old joke about the DBA who asked the system admin is the systems were backed up every night. The sysadmin then walked over to the server rack and physically pushes the rack before answering 'yup'!

Meetup Mess for North Texas MySQL Users Group

The Meetup.com folks have created a lot of unnecessary confusion lately. Their rejection of sponsorship money from Sun and MySQL has caused many of their MySQL user groups to scramble. The North Texas MySQL Meetup became North Texas MySQL Users Group and we though all was done. Well, no. Meetup.com sent out 'do not let this group die' emails that caused a flurry a messages to flood my email.

The next meeting of the North Texas MySQL Users Group will Monday August 3rd (We are taking July off) at 7:00PM in Suite 700, 16000 Dallas Tollway, Dallas TX. The presentation will be MySQL Basics -- how to install, configure, and start using MySQL

So we will meet up without Meetup.com!

Texans - learn to tune your MySQL Servers

Brian Miezejewski will be presenting at the North Texas MySQL Users Group on June 1st on performance tuning on your system. Brian is a top-level tuning guru and this is your chance to get an expert to examine your system.

So on your system, run the following:

mysqladmin -u -p va >varis.txt


Then during your peak usage time (if possible):

mysqladmin -u -p ex -i 15 -r >stats.txt


Let it run for 10 minutes before hitting ctrl-c to kill it. Bring in the varis.txt and the stats.txt files for tuning and review.


Meeting: June 1st
7:00 PM
Sun Offices
Suite 700
16000 Dallas Tollway
Dallas


NorthTexasMySQL.org

Changing Testing Partners from Pearson VUE to Prometric

As part of integration with Sun Learning, MySQL Certification will be moving from using Pearson VUE to Prometric as our testing partner. July 31st, 2009 will be the last day that candidates will be able to take exams or use MySQl exam vouchers at a Pearson VUE test center. Those with outstanding exam vouchers that they can not use by July 31st, 2009 should contact certification@sun.com for an exchange.

Cluster presentation -- Richardson, Texas

The kind folks at The Dallas PHP/MySQL Users Group have asked me to repeat my 'MySQL Cluster -- a gentle introduction' presentation tonight at their meeting. This was after sitting through the original performance where I talked about how to set up complete cluster on a laptop. The presentation has been updated to reference Cluster 7.0 and the demo will work now that I have static IP addresses figured out with Virtualbox. So you know where to be if you are in the DFW Metroples and are not watching American Idol tonight.

The presentation in PDF format is available on NorthTexasMySQL.org

DataBox from ReportMill

Last night at the North Texas MySQL Users Group meeting, Jeff Martin from ReportMill.com showed off their DataBox tool.

This is a Java based tool for developing rich Internet applications. It has the hooks to create MySQL databases and link the data to applications. Jeff demonstrated creating tables from scratch, importing files into a database, and then using that data in a full function application that took a very shot time to create. It is much faster than compatible frameworks and features a rich set of Java enhancements for effects.

So if you quickly need to get from raw data to full application, check out DataBox.

305 exams taken at the UC, new crop of DBAs and Developers on the loose!

Over 300 exams were taken at the 2009 MySQL Users Conference. Many more DBAs were certified this year then last and the Developer cert was not as popular.

We had problems with network bandwidth (Thanks to Patrick at O'Reilly for getting us more as soon as he could) and some software glitches with the new software. Some folks asked to take their exam at a location with better bandwidth and their results are still trickling in to the Certification Team.

The new 5.1 DBA exam was offered and the general review is that it is a much more realistic test of a DBA's skills than the older version. There were a few edits that did not make it into the system that cause some confusion but those taking the exam carried on bravely.

Thanks for all who made the journey to the Magnolia room, especially those who made it through the 1,200 teenagers who showed up for the conference after ours!