MongoDB in 2013 -- A Year in Review

It's again that time of the year. Analysts are spending oceans of words to predict the future, companies are making plans for the next year and people are resting and enjoying the break with their families. To me, this is the perfect time to reflect on my choices, the direction I'm headed to and consider if I still love what I do.

At the beginning of the year I decided to join MongoDB (formerly 10gen). The more I think about it, the more I realize I've been wrong. Yes, it's been the worst decision in my life not to join MongoDB when I was first offered the opportunity years ago. At that time an insightful friend asked me to consider the opportunity. At that time I didn't see what I see today.

I didn't see the database world changing so quickly. I didn't see lots of new applications being built on MongoDB and an ecosystem growing around the product. I couldn't glimpse the future of it becoming the leading NoSQL database. I couldn't understand the opportunity for Document Databases and for JSON emerging as a new standard for developers... or maybe I just preferred stability over challenge.

Time has passed since then and now I'm here. How was 2013 at MongoDB? Just amazing. As a good scribe I want to capture the key developments in the MongoDB world in a single page. This is an exercise that I'm doing since years and it gives an idea of the pace of growth, how well we communicate and the level of engagement of the ecosystem.

Company

• MongoDB Extends Its Lead As The Industry's "Best NoSQL Database"
• MongoDB Closes $150 Millions in Funding
• MongoDB is the Fastest-Growing Community in Big Data
• First Ever MongoDB World 2014 Announced
• 10gen Announces Company Name Change to MongoDB, Inc.
• MongoDB Establishes Financial Services Advisory Group
• MongoDB CEO Visits Dublin to Open New EMEA Headquarters
• MongoDB Moves to Former New York Times Building
• 10gen Recognized as a 2013 Computerworld Honors Laureate
• 10gen Hires Former TIBCO CFO Sydney Carey
• Philip Carty to Lead Global Sales at 10gen
• 10gen Promotes Max Schireson to CEO

Products

• MongoDB Certification now available for Developers and DBAs
• Private, On-Demand Training for MongoDB Now Available
• Integration of Hadoop and MongoDB, Big Data’s Two Most Popular Technologies, Gets Significant Upgrade
• MongoDB Backup Service Announced
• 10gen Releases MongoDB 2.4

Clients

• Forbes Succeeds with MongoDB
• Trend Micro Aims for 24/7 Uptime With MongoDB
• Seven Bridges Genomics Relies on MongoDB for Next-Generation Sequencing Analysis
• EnerNOC Unlocks Insights for Electrical Grid with MongoDB
• Novawise Chooses MongoDB to Power Flexible Pharmaceutical App
• MongoDB to Power UK Met Office Space Weather Predictions
• Comparethemarket.com Selects MongoDB to Improve User Experience
• MetLife Leapfrogs Insurance Industry with MongoDB-Powered Big Data Application
• ServiceSource Scales to Manage $8 Billion in Recurring Revenue with MongoDB
• CARFAX® Selects MongoDB to Power 11 Billion Record Database

Partners

• Pentaho Announces New Offering for MongoDB-based Business Intelligence
• MongoDB and Red Hat Deliver Integrated Security Solution for MongoDB
• IBM and MongoDB Collaborate to Bring Mobile to the Enterprise
• Informatica and MongoDB Partner to Expand Data Integration for MongoDB
• 10gen Launches Partner Program

I want to say thank you to all partners, customers, colleagues and users who made this journey a great one. I'm looking forward to working with all of you even more in the years to come. PKPFZ79ENW4D

From Oracle to 10gen, The MongoDB Company

Those who are familiar with me know I've a dream.

5 years ago I decided to leave a systems integrator where I was doing great. Why? I wanted to be in a company with the same growth prospects that Oracle had in the 80s. I dreamed to be in the Oracle of 30 years ago and, as time travel wasn't affordable, I decided to join MySQL AB to help expand the business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
A few years later my dream came true, but in a slightly different sense. Sun acquired MySQL and was later swallowed by Oracle giving me the opportunity to join the company I wished I could have helped build.

Oracle is an amazing company and the MySQL family is full of energy and passion. The product is much better now and the opportunities are even more. MySQL is a dream that I've proudly been part of, but I decided to move on to a new adventure to keep the energy, commitment and passion that are part of me. That's why I decided to leave Oracle.

I've joined an outstanding company, with a leading solution and huge growth prospects. A company that could become the size of Oracle in less than 30 years. I'll be working with a product sitting at the intersection of Cloud, Mobile and Big Data. A document database that will shape the technology landscape in the years to come.

With an attractive partner program and a shiny new version of MongoDB just launched, it's the right time for me to join 10gen. I've accepted the exciting challenge of building the ecosystem and work with software, hardware, cloud, services and channel partners to make MongoDB the de-facto standard NoSQL database.

Interested in a partnership with 10gen? Let's talk! Reach out to me via LinkedIn or firstname.lastname at 10gen.com. ;)

My new dream starts today, and today is the time to say Thank You! to all friends, colleagues, customers and users who made the MySQL journey a great one. I look forward to working with all of you again in the future.

All the best!

2012, the Best Year for MySQL (...so far, but more to come)

It's the end of the year and, before the world ends ;-) , I feel the pressure to follow up on last year's article "2011, a great year for MySQL in Review". I'll adopt a similar format and mention things in context, covering products, marketing, momentum, etc. at a high level. I may have missed something and I hope my colleagues will contribute to the list.

I really do think it's been the best year for MySQL so far... well, at least since when I signed my contract with MySQL AB at the end of 2007. We're just at the beginning of our journey and I wish to the MySQL family, to our community and ecosystem an even better 2013!

Summary
With MySQL Cluster 7.2 GA, MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate and Cluster 7.3 DMR this is the start of something exceptional. These products are introducing long-awaited features and received very positive feedback from our community.

New windows tools joined the party to help customers migrate from Microsoft SQL Server and access MySQL from Excel. MySQL Cluster Manager has been updated and the new auto-installer saw the light of the day. We improved our Connectors, released new ones and delivered additional value to MySQL Enterprise Edition customers. We've also held our first ever MySQL Connect conference that's been a phenomenal success and the MySQL momentum is growing exponentially.

Products
MySQL 5.6 will be loved by developers, giving them more freedom to build next generation applications. With huge performance improvements, new NoSQL access and better replication, that's going to be the best MySQL release to date.
New options for High Availability are waiting to be deployed in your data centers to increase service levels and policy-based auditing will make your servers safer.
MySQL Cluster 7.2 went GA in February, initially delivering 1.2 Billion queries per minute, but then beating his own achievement and producing 1.1 Billion queries writes per minute. Adaptive Query Localization and better ease of use increased Cluster use cases. Leveraging our Not-Only SQL strategy, the latest previews introduced Node.JS access to provide developers further flexibility. Last but not least, Foreign Keys are now part of MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR.

Case Studies
A lot of case studies can be found here, but let me pick some of the recent noteworthy ones:

• MySQL Cluster Powers El Chavo from Playful Play, Latin America's Most Popular Facebook Game.
• RedeHost Quadriples Backup Speed with MySQL Enterprise Edition
• With Its MySQL Database-as-a-Service CERN Empowers Scientists
• StayFriends Secures a Leading Position Among European Social Media Sites with Robust, High-Performance, Relational Database
• Tilgin Improves Subscriber Device Management by Enabling Telecommunications Operators with Robust Database Solution
• Verizon Wireless Supports its Mission-Critical Employee Portal with MySQL
• A special mention goes to Twitter, who's handled a huge workload with MySQL during 2012 Presidential Elections

Events & Momentum
At the first ever MySQL Connect conference, Edward Screven presented enlightening statistics:

• Over 15 Million Estimated Active Installations
• Facebook: 163k Fans, +35% Yoy Growth
• Twitter: 25k Followers, +67% Yoy Growth
• MySQL Newsletter: 1,4m Subscribers, +20% YoY Growth
• Events: Dozens Of Fully Booked Dev Days & Tech Tours
• Awards: CRN, Linux Journal, PHP Architect...

Several of those numbers have grown since then, and MySQL once again got awarded the Linux Journal Reader’s Choice Award as Best Database for 2012.

People are downloading, tweeting, liking, adopting and blogging about MySQL at a great pace. Embedding MySQL has become a common practice. Adoption in the Cloud is skyrocketing and MySQL has emerged as the leading database, offered by the vast majority of cloud services providers. MySQL is also a key component of big data platforms, with Hadoop vendors estimating 80% of their deployments are integrated with MySQL. MySQL is everywhere!

To all MySQL users, customers, partners, colleagues, developers, advocates and aficionados: Thank you for another amazing year! Go MySQL!

Related articles

• Thank You MySQL Community! MySQL 5.6.9 Release Candidate Available Now!
• MySQL, An Ideal Choice for The Cloud
• MySQL and Hadoop Integration - Unlocking New Insight
• Top 5 Developer Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6
• MySQL Cluster Manager 1.2 - using the new features
• With Its MySQL Database-as-a-Service CERN Empowers Scientists

Meeting the MySQL Team at UKOUG (ICC Birmingham, December 3-5 | 2012)

If you're planning to attend UKOUG in Birmingham on Dec 3-5, here's your guide to know more about Oracle's MySQL.

There's a MySQL stream on Monday 5th and we've a great list of sessions, including:

• Rich Mason's keynote on how to Deploy, Scale and Save with Linux, Virtualization and MySQL
• Keith Hollman on stage to discuss how to Embrace Database Diversity
• Mark Swarbrick's lecture on Tips & Tricks for MySQL Replication
• Mario Beck's talk on Performance Schema
• My two slots on how to Leverage Oracle (and MySQL) Data Management Solutions together and then on the High Availability Options available with MySQL

I'd like also to mention Dr. David Harper, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, on Better Living Trough Metadata: Harnessing the Power of MySQL Information Schema.

Want to meet myself or my team at the UKOUG? Feel free to get in touch via LinkedIn or Twitter.

Want to come prepared? Here's what you can read beforehand:

• MySQL Connect Presentations Available (blogs.oracle.com)
• New Options for MySQL High Availability (blogs.oracle.com)
• What's new in MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate (dev.mysql.com)
• New MySQL Cluster 7.3 Previews: Foreign Keys, NoSQL Node.js API and Auto-Tuned Clusters (dev.mysql.com)

MySQL Events that I don't want to miss

Do you want to closely follow what MySQL is doing around the globe? We've created a Lanyrd guide just for that. It's curated by the MySQL Community, Marketing, Presales and Product Management teams and with some other contributions too.
Tomorrow we'll host the MySQL Innovation Day (in streaming too) and MySQL Connect is also quickly approaching. If you'd like showcase your products and services to the MySQL Community you can take advantage of the various sponsorship opportunities.

Stay tuned for the latest and greatest updates from the MySQL team at Oracle and from our vibrant community!

MySQL Cluster 7.2 -- Unlimited Possibilities

We've recently seen some great announcements of MySQL Cluster delivering amazing results for both selects and updates. The posts (see related articles below) are full of juicy technical details and proofs, but today I'd like to change the perspective a bit. Let's compare those figures with real-world data and imagine what could be done. Please note that I'm not using any scientific method here, just dreaming about the unlimited opportunities offered by MySQL Cluster today.

MySQL Cluster 7.2.7 -- 1B+ Writes per Minute

Cluster can deliver 1B+ selects per minute with 8 nodes and 1B+ updates per minute with 30 nodes.

Our planet is getting quite populated and interconnected. World population is 7B+ and 2B+ of us are using internet. Let's assume that, due to time-zones, only 1/3 of the total internet population is online at a given time (700M+) and that a single action generates one update and one select on the database.

What kind of services can we offer then?

With such scalability and performance, MySQL Cluster offers endless opportunities to develop something new that can support the exponential growth of the web and offer always-on services to everyone, for example:

• Hellos from the world -- a website where everyone can say hello to the world, whenever they want. MySQL Cluster can handle the entire online population in less than 1 minute;
• Let's shop together -- a global eCommerce website selling everything with 100% market share. If everyone would buy an item per minute, MySQL Cluster could easily fulfill the needs of the entire internet population with 30 nodes;
• Like everything you like -- a like button that can be attached to everything in order to collect statistics on users' favorite things. MySQL Cluster could easily sustain the total online world assuming they'd like 1 thing per minute;

Furthermore, MySQL Cluster could handle updates from all of Zynga's 60M active daily users in 3 seconds or all of Facebook's 900M+ active users in less than a minute. All of that giving you ACID compliance and synchronous replication to ensure no data loss.

The Oracle MySQL engineering team did a great job with Cluster: let's build the next big thing with it!

Related articles

• Where would I use MySQL Cluster?
• MySQL Cluster 7.2.7 achieves 1BN update transactions per minute
• 1 Billion Queries Per Minute - MySQL Cluster 7.2 is GA!
• Challenges in reaching 1BN reads and updates per minute for MySQL Cluster 7.2

Changing Name and Improving Focus

You might have noticed that this blog changed name and URL. Instead of having one single blog for everything, I decided to split my blogging activities in two separate blogs.

If you're interested in MySQL, Oracle, Databases, Business Intelligence, Open Source, Cloud, etc. this is the place to be. Blog's new name is Data & Co.
A big "Thank you!" to David Stokes who moved all the planet.mysql.com references to the old blog to this new one.

On the other hand, if you'd like to read about communication, marketing, advertising, PR, soft skills, etc. feel free look at Publicime.  Please see the introduction of my new blog here. I've moved non-technical articles to this one to make sure my posts on Data & Co are exclusively technology-centric.

This will result in better focus for both blogs and I won't annoy you with topics you're not interested in. The old url is redirecting to Data & Co. by default.

2011, A great year for MySQL in review...

I see so many posts on what happened to company X, product Y and dream Z that I couldn't resist the temptation to summarize this great year for MySQL. At the end of 2010, Oracle did an announcement we were all waiting for: MySQL 5.5 is GA! Another year has passed since then and it's time to reflect on what has been done.

I know this is a long post. I tried to rewrite it at least 10 times to make it shorter, but I couldn't condense the list. Hence, I wrote a summary in the beginning for those who don't want to read it all.

I believe that 2011 was an exceptional year for MySQL and I really enjoy being part of this team. I wish all of us a lot of success and fun in the years to come!

Summary:
Oracle released many MySQL 5.6 and MySQL Cluster 7.2 DMRs accompanied by new versions of MySQL Enterprise Monitor, MySQL Enterprise Backup, MySQL Workbench (and utilities), MySQL Proxy, MySQL Cluster Manager and Connectors.

The MySQL team unveiled new products like the MySQL Installer for Windows and Oracle VM Templates for MySQL. Besides, the MySQL Enterprise offering has been enriched with new commercial extensions. MySQL can now be leveraged as one of the Oracle data management solutions with new certifications and the integration with My Oracle Support increased the business value of customers' investment on Oracle technologies.

Additionally MySQL presented at major events across the world and won a few awards.

The Oracle's MySQL Sales Consulting Team is Hiring Across EMEA

Would you like to work with the biggest websites and social networks in the world? Do you want to support large enterprises with their database initiatives? Would you like to assist ISVs and OEMs providing the technology that powers their products?

In the MySQL Sales Consulting organization we do just that.

You’ll support MySQL partners, customers and prospects across EMEA, evangelize our products, assist marketing and cooperate with product management to shape the future of MySQL.

Sounds interesting? We're actively looking for senior professionals to join the team!
Feel free to reach me on LinkedIn for more information or have a look at the links below:

• Germany
• Spain
• Austria
• Switzerland

Please note that the location in some posts is wrong as Malaga is obviously neither in Austria nor in Switzerland. :)
Multiple locations for each position are possible and we'll fix the error soon.

Update: we've fixed the location typos now!

Oracle's MySQL - What's New? Live event in Rome on Oct, 7

As a follow up of this post I'd like to inform all the readers that the What's New event will be replicated in Rome on Oct, 7.

Join us at this live event to better understand what’s new with MySQL. You will learn more about the current and future state of MySQL, now part of the Oracle family of products. We will also cover Oracle’s investment in MySQL aiming to make it even a better MySQL.

In particular the following topics will be discussed:

• Oracle’s MySQL Strategy
• What’s New for:
• The MySQL Server
• MySQL Cluster
• MySQL Enterprise
• MySQL Workbench

Attendance is free, but you’ll need to register in advance. Seats are limited, register today!

When:

• October 7, 2010: 9:30am in Rome - Register here.

Oracle's MySQL - What's New? Live event in Milan on Sept, 28

Join us at this live event in Milan to better understand what’s new with MySQL. You will learn more about the current and future state of MySQL, now part of the Oracle family of products. We will also cover Oracle’s investment in MySQL aiming to make it even a better MySQL.

In particular the following topics will be discussed:

• Oracle’s MySQL Strategy
• What’s New for:
• The MySQL Server
• MySQL Cluster
• MySQL Enterprise
• MySQL Workbench

Stay tuned because we are organizing a similar event in Rome that will be announced soon. Attendance is free, but you’ll need to register in advance. Seats are limited, register today!

When:

• September 28, 2010: 9:30am in Milan - Register here.

Wearing a Red Tie (or a T-Shirt if you prefer).

Starting from tomorrow (1st of June) I will officially become an Oracle employee. It is quite funny how many companies you can change without even applying for another job. ;-)
I've been hired by MySQL in the beginning of 2008, a few months later it has been acquired by Sun and after about a year we've been acquired again, this time by Oracle.

I personally consider this a new beginning and I join Oracle with a lot of enthusiasm. After all I'm now part of a company that has a huge set of products and technologies and it is like a playground for me.

I'm afraid I've not blogged frequently in these months, but I plan to write more and more in the future. This short post is just to wish good luck to all the Dolphins who have joined Oracle and all those who are swimming in a different ocean.

Go MySQL! Go Oracle!