N. Texas Users Group meeting

The next meeting of the North Texas MySQL Users Group is Monday February 1st. There will be a give away of soon to be collectible Sun memorabilia! The presentation is An Introduction to MySQL: 99 Things You Probably Did Not Know and we will talk about the future of the group in 2010 (some exiting opportunities).

Monday February 1st, 7:00 PM, Suite 700,Sun Offices 16000 Dallas Tollway, Dallas, Texas

MySQL Certification Exam Price Raised

Sun has made changes in the certification procedures for all their exams including the MySQL exams. Exam vouchers are no longer offered through local Sun Sales Offices but exams can be purchased directly from Prometric. The price has been raised to $300 per exam.

The exam codes are:
Sun 310-810 Sun Certified MySQL DBA 5.0 part I
Sun 310-811 Sun Certified MySQL DBA 5.0 part II
Sun 310-812 Sun Certified MySQL Developer 5.0 part I
Sun 310-813 Sun Certified MySQL Developer 5.0 part II
Sun 310-814 Sun Certified MySQL Associate
Sun 310-815 Sun Certified MySQL 5.1 Cluster DBA

The new prices went into effect January 19th.

Publishing your MySQL Certs from the Sun Certification system

I received a question from my last entry on how to let others see your MySQL Certifications. In the past, the MySQL site had a list of those with the various certifications. Sun's certification system is different.

1. Go to the Sun Certification Database


2. Enter your ID and password. The format for the ID is usually SUNnnnnnnn but it may be different. There is a First Time Users link and a link to get your ID and password (you do remember the email you used when you took that MySQL, don't you?). And if you get stuck, contact Certificiation@SUN.Com


3. On the left hand menu, under Certifications will be a link for Publish Credentials.


4. Here you provide an email address for where you want your certifications sent. You can also select which certification you want to share.


5. You will get a chance to preview of what will be sent. The Void -- Sample Only Water mark will not be on the sent message.

So what will the recipient receive? They will receive an email from The Sun Credential Verification System with a link and a authorization code to view your credentials.

MySQL Certs up 48% in 2009

Despite a bad economy and switching testing partners, MySQL certifications were up 48% in 2009. Most of the growth was from the new hands-on DBA 5.1 exam with the multiple choice exams gaining roughly 10 percent. The only exception was the Associates certification which actually decreased slightly.

Congratulations to all of you how earned a certification in 2009 and thank you for your support of MySQL.

Fulfillment Issues -- getting back on the right foot

MySQL Certification had a very busy 2009 with a great deal of change. Not all of the changes happened gracefully and now I am correcting problems with the fulfillment system. Regular readers will remember that MySQL Certification was integrated into the systems used by Sun Learning in mid 2009. Where things got shaky was in the processing of DBA 5.1 certificates.

Previously Ricky Ho and I oversaw data entry, database updates, and fulfillment. The deeply missed Ricky did the heavy lifting in the printing and mailing of certificates. The test data from the multiple choice exams was flowing properly into the new (for MySQL) system but not for the hands-on DBA 5.1 exam. I have been going through the certification records and manually entering the data for the 5.1 DBA certificate holders. It will take a week or so to get things caught up. Meanwhile, if you are still waiting for a certificate for your MySQL 5.1 certification, please let me know at Certification@MySQL.com.

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MySQl Certification exams will be offered at the 2010 O'Reilly MySQL Conference. More details will be posted here as they become available.

North Texas 1st meeting of the year -- Workbench & Cookies

Happy New Year! Monday night is the first meeting of the North Texas MySQL Users Group for 2010! And the topic for discussion will be MySQL Workbench.

Workbench is a tool for visual database design, schema documentation, change management, and is replacing the old MySQL GUI tools. If you have not tried the latest releases, you will be for a pleasant surprise.

NorthTexasMySQL.org meets at 7:00PM sharp at the Sun Offices, Suite 700, 16000 Dallas Tollway, Dallas TX. We welcome all who want to know more about MySQL, databases, or Open Source. Admission is free and I will bring cookies!