A Rockstar Speaks

MySQL Rockstar,

 

René Cannaò, drops in on Fred & Scott to wax philosophical about the success of MySQL, the MySQL Community, and his inspiration for ProxySQL

 

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Episode Transcript:

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:10
Unknown
Welcome to Inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks, a podcast dedicated to all things MySQL. We bring you the latest news from the MySQL team, MySQL project updates and insightful interviews with members of the MySQL community. Sit back and enjoy as your hosts bring you the latest updates on your favorite open-source database. Let's get started! Hello and welcome to Sakila Speaks, the podcast dedicated to MySQL.

00:00:36:14 - 00:01:01:13
Unknown
I am leFred and that is Scott Stroz. Today we are happy to welcome René Cannaò to our podcast. René is a well-known figure in the MySQL ecosystem. He's mainly known as the author of ProxySQL, which he founded in 2016 after developing it since 2013. René is one of our rockstasr and recently received his award during the last Pre-FOSDEM MySQL Belgium Days.

00:01:01:15 - 00:01:25:11
Unknown
Welcome, René. Hi, Fred. Thanks for the introduction. I'm very excited to be part of this podcast. And, yeah, it's I'm way I also very much appreciate the MySQL award that I received the early last last month. It was a nice surprise, and I'm very excited to be part of this growing community. Awesome. Thank you René, it was great meeting you last month.

00:01:25:13 - 00:01:48:07
Unknown
So, as a longtime member of the MySQL community, do you have any thoughts on how MySQL became the most popular open source database that powers the internet? I don't think that MySQL  popularity can be attributed to just one single factor, but I think the combination of factors that made, MySQL so popular as an open source database that is powering the web.

00:01:48:08 - 00:02:17:19
Unknown
So, I would say that the probably the very first factor is its simplicity and easy to use, that it made it accessible to all developers of all levels, especially during the early days of the web. So, everybody could have access to MySQL and install it. And this made possible for MySQL to be part of, that very classic Lamp stack in which we had the Linux, Apache, MySQL, and then PHP, Python or Perl.

00:02:18:01 - 00:02:47:14
Unknown
So,  MySQL was part of this stack, and this allowed it to have, widespread adoption, especially for web application. And, you know, this, this sort of created, positive feedback loop because, as more, users were using MySQL, then the product was becoming a bigger product and then more users were using MySQL. So, you know, this created an absolutely, feedback loop.

00:02:47:19 - 00:03:21:04
Unknown
And I think another factor that absolutely affected, the popularity of MySQL was the fact that, not only was easy to download it easy to install, but it was also very reliable, very, very good performance for web application. And it was focused on what the traditional and nontraditional, transactional and non-transactional, workload. So, everybody could make it, and could use it no matter how big were their specific web application.

00:03:21:05 - 00:03:51:11
Unknown
And, finally, I think, another important factor was the fact that it had a very, fast growing community around it. So, this absolutely is one of the factors that made it, one of the most popular open-source database. Awesome. Thank you. René. So, as we can hear, you know, very well, MySQL, you're around for a long time in the community, but, it seems that you also worked at MySQL, isn't it?

00:03:51:11 - 00:04:19:05
Unknown
Yes. That's correct. As I said, so if you correct, have been in the MySQL ecosystem for very long time, I think I started using MySQL in production in 2004. I was one of the very, few people that saw getting the MySQL certification. Actually, I think it was I was, number 23 with the MySQL Cluster certification.

00:04:19:09 - 00:05:04:01
Unknown
So, I've been using my secret for very long time. And as you correctly mentioned, I also worked for MySQL from 2008 till 2011. And, I was part of the MySQL support team. Immediately after the acquisition from Sun. And there was that the last 11. So, after, the acquisition, for Oracle. And I would say that as me, I have been very fortunate in, working, team member of the MySQL support team because there I had the opportunity not only to work together with excellent, and very knowledgeable people that were working in my same team, in the MySQL support team.

00:05:04:06 - 00:05:27:19
Unknown
But, I also had, let's say easy access to developers or MySQL developers. So, if there was anything that none of us in the MySQL support