cross-posted from my ONLamp weblog for those who didn’t see it there

I prefer programming to administering systems–so much so that if there’s a way for me to avoid deploying software or running backups or installing software, I’ll take it. Hey, if I can avoid administering my own database, so much the better!

I also prefer re-using existing software to writing my own, mostly. If someone else has already built something I can use trivially, great!

What happens when you combine those two concepts?

My colleague Tony Stubblebine, who you may remember used to be a senior software developer here at O’Reilly, recently went to a Salesforce conference. Their AppExchange program caught his attention, and he twisted our arms into publishing a three-part series on building your own hosted applications with AppExchange.

I used to work for a dot-com that had a very similar idea back in 1998, but ours never took off. It’s nice to see that the idea, at least, was worthwhile. Even if you’re not in the business of writing hosted business software, the development and deployment and business models are very interesting.

There are several methods to do live MySQL database backups. These methods are either storage engine specific (InnoDB hot backup, mysqlhotcopy), or require read locks (mysqldump), or require additional hardware (backup using replication slaves, LVM snapshot). Some of these backup methods can do backups of remote MySQL servers also.  So far, there is no backup  method that will provide storage engine agnostic, consistent full backups of local and remote servers.   Goal of Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) of MySQL is to consolidate all these and future methods of MySQL backup and use the optimal method for the MySQL configuration.

One of exciting developments in MySQL is the development of MySQL Online backup. The functional specification for the MySQL Online Backup APIs are available in MySQL forge and currently, the initial implementation of ARCHIVE storage engine backup and recovery is available in the bitkeeper source tree.

You can read more about MySQL Online Backup and ZRM for MySQL in our blog.

MySQL AB’s Jay Pipes just sent me this notice:

The first-ever MySQL Camp unconference will be going on at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, this Friday through Sunday, 10th - 12th of November.

The camp is free and open to all participants. Focus for the conference is on developing and understanding MySQL source code and determining direction for future community developments on the MySQL server.

Similar to the successful BarCamps, MySQL Camp encourages open discussion, participation, and networking of attendees, with both pre-organized and impromptu sessions on MySQL source code internals, API development, community activism and issues, and advanced MySQL usage. Attendees are asked to come with ideas and a can-do attitude!

More information, and a registration page, is available on the MySQL Camp wiki site.