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It might have seemed last week, with the announcement of the Open Database Alliance, that MySQL is forking. The ODA promises a "central clearinghouse for MySQL development" and claims to improve on areas where criticism has historically been aimed at MySQL AB/Sun: bug-fixing, performance, and community responsiveness. But what's going on behind the scenes is much more subtle and promises a much better outcome for MySQL.

MySQL conference wrap-up: Flash, cloud computing, managing large installations, the value of community, and how to fumble your way to winning the presidency.

I sense a bigger enterprise theme at the MySQL conference this year. The pride of putting up a PHP- or Rails-backed web site lies in the past; now people are concerned with scaling into the clouds (figuratively and literally) and ensuring absolute reliability.

MySQL has had a long and sometimes strange journey from an independent database project to being commercialized; then brought to Sun and now possibly moving to a new home again. Brian Aker is the director of technology for MySQL with Sun Microsystems and probably is familiar as anyone with the life history and current status of the popular open-source database. He recently discussed the current status of MySQL with us, and how it might fare if IBM were to acquire Sun.

The importance of the differences among web application platforms like .NET, JSP, PHP, etc. drops dramatically under the cloud computing paradigm. Which architecture you choose really comes down to one question: what kind of programming and support resources do you have? If the answer is "Microsoft technologies", however, you should be aware of the Microsoft cloud tax.

Instant Rails is getting old, but it's still a quick way to install Rails and start coding. This screencast shows how to download and install Instant Rails, and shows off how it works with a simple example from Chapter 2 of Learning Rails.

MySQL AB (now Sun's Database group) established a multi-pronged business model long ago: support contracts, dual licensing, and proprietary add-ons all play a role in making them one of the biggest success stories in the area of open source business. Today their MySQL Query Analyzer adds another brick to that edifice. The analyzer can do simple things such as tell you how long a recent query took and how the optimizer handled it (the results of EXPLAIN statements). But it can also give historical information such as how the current runs of a query compare to earlier runs.