preFOSDEM MySQL Days 2023

Two days before the main FOSDEM event, MySQL enthusiasts all over the world gather together for learning and networking at preFOSDEM MySQL Days in Brussels. This time the event took place at the same building where it was interrupted by COVID - ICAB Incubator. The event was free but required registration due to limited capacity. A couple of weeks before the event, all available tickets were sold out.

The room was almost full. Glad to see so many MySQL friends finally gathering together after the 2 years of FOSDEM being virtual.

The event lasted 2 days. That was really great because MySQL Devroom during FOSDEM was planned to be quite short, with a limited amount of sessions.

Day 1

LeFred opened the first day with a welcoming talk. After that, Kenny Gryp talked about what’s new in MySQL until 8.0.32 and thanked all community contributors.

Also, Kenny gave a short introduction to MySQL Shell for VS Code.

During the coffee breaks and lunchtime, everyone had a chance to take funny pictures with the charming dolphin Sakila - MySQL symbol.

Some lucky guys even managed to get a mini version of it as a nice souvenir and a reminder of the event. I was among them!

Nicolai Plum from Booking.com presented what they learned from 18+ of experience using MySQL in production, how they manage it at scale, and why they continue to use it now despite so many new databases emerging all the time nowadays.

LeFred explained in detail the new MySQL 8 feature - Dynamic InnoDB Redo Log and gave his recommendations.

Also, all attendees had an opportunity to learn everything about MySQL Table Cache from Percona’s Principal Software Engineer, Dmitry Lenev. His talk was about why Table Cache is needed, how it works and what it contains, new knobs and gauges in Percona Server 8.0.31, and typical problems and ways to solve them.

The emphasis was put on MySQL HeatWave for OLTP - 2 talks were devoted to this topic. Luís Soares gave a brief overview and talked about the new features, and Castern Thalheimer reported what is possible today and what is not.

Day 1 was closed with the presentation by Deepthi Sigireddi from Vitess with an overview of Vitess features and their experience in achieving consensus with replicated MySQL.

Day 2

The second day started with Kenny Gryp and Miguel Araújo talking about disaster recovery solutions in MySQL.

Three speakers from Percona participated on the second day - Marco Tusa with a talk about migrating from MySQL Galera Base Solution to MySQL Group Replication, Peter Zaitsev with 22 Reasons to Migrate to MySQL 8 (and 4 NOT to), and Vinicius Grippa describing possibilities of Performance Schema.

Simon J Mudd from Booking.com revealed their experience of migration to MySQL Group Replication.

Luís Soares showed some recent interesting developments in terms of observability and operability of replication in MySQL.

You can find all slides from the event here.

The end of the day was magnificent. LeFred, MySQL Community Manager, presented a MySQL Rockstar 2022award. Peter Zaitsev was the first to receive it for taking the risky gamble of setting up an in-person conference for the MySQL Community right after the pandemic. It really helped to bring new energy to the community after 2 years of virtual-only events. All Perconians at the event were so pleased that Peter got this recognition!

Several guys were recognized, too, including the whole Booking DBA Team.

This was followed by the traditional MySQL Community Dinner. It is impossible to describe how important this after-party is for networking and interacting with the community. And it’s a lot of fun indeed! Oracle, with the help of dinner sponsors, organized treats and beverages for everyone who bought a dinner ticket. All of them were sold out far in advance, of course!

Have my fingers crossed to meet all MySQL community next year in Brussels again! ∎