Join the SF MySQL Meetup for our April meetup where Bret Taylor from FriendFeed talks about how they store their data in a "schema-less" system on top of MySQL. FriendFeed stores over 250 million entries and a bunch of other data, from comments and "likes" to friend lists.

As the database has grown, they have tried to iteratively deal with the scaling issues that come with rapid growth. They did the typical things, like using read slaves and memcache to increase read throughput and sharding our database to improve write throughput. However, as FriendFeed grew, scaling their existing features to accommodate more traffic turned out to be much less of an issue than adding new features.

In particular, making schema changes or adding indexes to a database with more than 10 – 20 million rows completely locks the database for hours at a time. After some deliberation, FriendFeed decided to implement a "schema-less" storage system on top of MySQL rather than use a completely new storage system. This talk attempts to describe the high-level details of the system.

Bret Tayler is one of the founders of FriendFeed.com. Before starting FriendFeed, he was a Group Product Manager at Google, responsible for Google’s developer products. Before that, he launched Google Maps and Google Local, and before that he worked on Google’s crawling and indexing infrastructure.

• Overview
  • What is the Yahoo! Open Stack?
    • Developer Tools – YUI, Tutorials
    • YOS SDK for PHP
  • Data APIs – YQL, BOSS …
  • Social APIs – Profiles, Connections, Updates, …
  • Application Platform
    • OpenSocial Support
• How does it all work?
  • Development Workflow
• Building an open application with PHP and YOS
• Common Problems & Solutions
  • CAJA
  • OpenSocial

For the main presentation David Gomel, Senior Program Manager leading SEO within CBS Interactive, will speak to us about SEO in a Web 2.0 world. The session will cover many of the important SEO issues that involve front and back-end engineers on a daily basis. Many of the decisions that tech folks make have the potential to materially impact search engine traffic. Even if you have been to a similar talk in the past, you should consider attending as we will be discussing topics that are frequently evolving. Please bring questions!

Topics will include:

• HTML fundamentals
• CSS Usage
• JavaScript/Flash/Ajax
• Graceful Degradation
• Multimedia Content
• Duplicate Content
• Redirection
• URLs
• Bot Traffic
• Robots.txt

…And More!

David Gomel is the Senior Program Manager leading SEO within CBS Interactive. He is responsible for SEO knowledge sharing and training within the company.

So if you’re in the SF area on Monday Feb 2nd, 2009, stop by the CBSi building and listen in.

Tungsten Replicator is a new open source project for database replication. It offers MySQL to Oracle replication, robust handling of master failures, extremely flexible topologies, and an extensible architecture that allows you to add your own replication features if you don’t find them there already. I’ll describe why MySQL needs more replication, show the product architecture, describe some of the problems it solves, and demonstrate the replicator in action. Finally, we’ll play “stump the chump” where you can present your replication problem and I’ll describe how our replicator handles it. Whether you have a tricky replication problem or are just curious about the subject, please join us. This is a very technical presentation that should be of interest to all true MySQL fans.

More information on Tungsten Replicator: http://www.continuent.com/community/tungsten-replicator

Peter Zaitsev will be giving his excellent presentation “Scaling MySQL powered Web Sites by Sharding and Replication” to the upcoming SF MySQL 6:00pm on November 3rd @ the CBS Interactive (formerly CNET Networks) building in SOMA San Francisco (235 2nd St).

RSVP here: http://mysql.meetup.com/30/calendar/8912109/

Description from the 2008 Velocity conference:
When your application grows beyond capacity of a single MySQL server there are few ways to scale, with most typical being Replication and Sharding.

In this presentation you will learn how, depending on your application performance scalability and high availability goals, you can choose what proper scaling strategy will be good for you.

We also will speak about scalability limitations of replication of Replication and Sharding, implementation complexities, and aspects of operation.

Peter Zaitsev’s bio:
MySQL Performance Blog

Peter helped many companies ranging from one man startups to Fortune 500 companies with their Performance and Scaling problems on various stages starting from architecture design and down to queries and schema optimization.

Over cause of the years Peter has spoken on many International conferences focused on MySQL, Open Source, Databases or High Performance Web applications.

Before co-founding Percona Peter worked for MySQL AB as head of High Performance Group being involved in Support, Consulting, Development and working with vendors helping to optimize their software or hardware to perform well with MySQL.

Peter also was involved in number of Web Startups in the roles ranging from CTO to Consultant and has a lot of experience in MySQL and Web Applications Operations, Deployment, Quality Assurance and Development.
Please join us!

Map to CNET Networks, Inc.
When you arrive, please look for the PHP/MySQL Meetup sign pointing you to the conference room.

Look forward to seeing you there!

RSVP here: http://php.meetup.com/139/calendar/8911737/

The blurb from ZendCon08:
Terry Chay, the original PHP Terrorist, is well known for his criticism and ridicule of the Ruby on Rails framework. He criticizes, mocks, and f-bombs his enemies into surrender. In this discussion, Terry will share his ideas and thoughts on making frameworks better.

Map to CNET Networks, Inc.
When you arrive, please look for the PHP Meetup sign pointing you to the conference room. Please RSVP if you are attending so that I can prepare enough snacks and beverages.

Look forward to seeing you there!

This event can be found at:
http://php.meetup.com/139/calendar/8911737/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=39294579201
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1195581/

I already have next month’s talk/speaker lined up.  Aaron Newton from Iminta.com (formerly CNET) will be giving us a preview of his Mootools talk titled “Mootools: An Overview” that he has planned for the upcoming AJAX Experience conference.  Aaron has a Mootools book coming out that’s available now via pre-order on Amazon.

So after my email earlier this week to Rana, he responded and said that he thought about it too and wanted to work out the transfer to me.  I’m glad he changed his mind.  Maybe he had a change of heart and realized the errors or his way.  Or maybe it had something to do with the 20+ people that emailed him and complained about what he was doing.   I guess whichever it was doesn’t really matter.  I’m now the official organizer and I’m really looking forward to where the group is going. 

My email announcement to the group after everything was worked out:

Hi everyone.  I wanted give a quick update on the status of the group and its leadership.  There was quite a bit of confusion over the last week that should be clarified.

First, the resignation email over the weekend was not about me.  That was sent because the official organizer (used to be Julian Triber) stepped down.  He & I have been talking on several occasions about his stepping down because he did not have time to focus on the group due work related time constraints.

Second, after a bit of confusion for the first part of the week, the group has been transferred officially to me.  As you know I’ve been setting them up and hosting them for the last 9 months.  The group has come a long way over the last year and I’m proud to say that we now average well over 60 people for the last 5 months.  (According to meetup.com anyway; personally I believe it to be a lot more.  There is no way Terry’s OO talk only had 71 people.  The room was overflowing!)  I’m really excited about how the group is growing and how we are reaching more and more people every month.  We’re the largest PHP Meetup they have!

In addition to me becoming the organizer of the group, I’ve assigned Mariano Peterson to be the assistant organizer.  For the last several months Mariano has been a great help in planning recent speakers & topics.  Thank you Mariano for your great work.

Finally, I’ve made a few changes to the setup of the group on the meetup.com website.  A) I’ve expanded our group’s topics to include Software Developers (ranked 3^rd), LAMP (1^st), and Web Technology (20^th).  We usually cover these topics each month in addition to our core PHP (1^st).  This will expand the reach of our audience and hopefully bring in more members.  B) I’ve opened up the message boards so that we can now communicate there in addition to the mailing list.  I’ll be clearing out old job postings and antiquated topics over the weekend.  C) I’m updating some of the default group fields & pages like group description, about us, why someone should join, adding an optional new user introduction, and a few others.  If you have any suggestions let me know
and I’ll try to work them in.

Thank you all for your participation and support for this group.  I look forward to seeing you all at the August 7^th meetup where Joe Stump from Digg will be talking about deploying code with a PEAR channel.

Thanks,

Mike (aka Touge)

P.S. If you have any requests for topics, please let me
know.

For the past nine months I have been organizing the San Francisco PHP Meetup group. During this time I was always under the impression that when the official organizer of the group resigned that the group would transfer to me so that I could continue running the group. Unfortunately this weekend the previous organizer resigned and did not transfer the group. Because he did not nominate a successor the organizer position became open for grabs for anyone. That’s right, for whatever reason, meetup.com feels that it is better to go to a first-come, first-served system rather than giving the assistant organizers a chance to run the meetup first. I’m sure you can tell where this is headed…

So when the group became open on Saturday someone else, Rana Singh, was able to take ownership of the group before I could. Initially I thought it was just a misunderstanding. I thought that perhaps he thought it was I who resigned not Julian. I definitely couldn’t fault him for thinking that, could I? So for the next 24 hours I attempted to contact him and straighten the situation out. To my overwhelming surprise, it was not a misunderstanding. He purposefully and willingly took ownership of the group and did not think there was anything wrong with not setting things to how they should have been. I was absolutely shocked that someone who had no involvement with the group for the last year could take over the group. As I talked with Rana over the phone Sunday night i could not believe the things that he was telling me. First I had a problem with how he told me he would be able to take the group to a level that I could not. This from someone who’s other groups cannot manage to have more than 20 people attend. Second, he wanted me to continue to setup and run the groups for him! I think that is that point where I started to feel insulted and taken advantage of.

After the first 24 hours of frustration I decided to contact several of the meetup members in hope of soliciting their support in explaining the mistake in the situation. Rather than have an open discussion of the matter, Rana choose to disable group emailing and replied to people’s complaints/concerns in a way that implied he was in the right because other people misunderstood the situation too! This seemed like very week reasoning to me (as well as to a few others in the discussion).  After almost a full day of heated discussion, I decided that it just was not worth it. I did not want to continue down this negative path. My hopes of Rana realizing the bad form of what he did slowly dwindled. Rather than continue to create more frustration and divide, I decided to not pursue the disagreement any farther.

This was my response:

I did a lot of thinking about this on my way home tonight and I’ve come to a decision. It is not one that I’m happy with but it one I can live with. I appreciate everyone’s support in this matter but I’ve decided to not pursue this conversation any farther. This started by what I thought was a simple misunderstanding and has since escalated into something that I do not want. Rana, I thought that after hearing the thoughts and support of the various members of this meetup you would reconsider you decision on what to do about this meetup. At this point I believe if you were going to change your mind you would have done so by now. I don’t want to continue to beat a dead horse and continue down this path of frustration. This group has always been about making the PHP community better and I’ve supported that fully. I’ve realized that by continuing this disagreement I am going against that principal and I would be creating additional frustrations and divisions. I do not want that.

That being said, Rana, I wish you the best of luck with this meetup group. Unfortunately I will not be able to support you as an assistant-organizer. I feel cheated out of something I worked very hard on and cannot in good conscience support this type of behavior. I cannot support someone who would think there is nothing wrong with what has happened here, ignored the wishes of the community and who has placed restrictions on the open communication of the group.

Thank you very much to each of you who took time out of your busy schedules to participate in this discuss and express your support of me. I truly appreciate it and value your friendships. Chris, thank you for your help with mediating this disagreement. It could not have been easy for you and I appreciate your patience and willingness to work with all parties involved.

The last nine months have been a time of immense joy for me. I have enjoyed the group and the lively discussions and even the occasional rants. Yes Terry, I’m talking about you and your thoughts about Ruby on Rails. With this group I’ve felt a sense of belonging and I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together. I’m particularly pleased how with each of your support (especially you Terry) we were able to take a small group of people (<10) and turning it into something much larger. Having 75-100 techie/programmers meet monthly to discuss their passions and to learn new things has never ceased to amaze me. Programmers tend to not be the most extroverted people I know. I have learned a lot from the speakers and other group members as well as made some good friends. Don’t worry, I definitely plan on keeping in touch.

As I am not able to communicate to the group as a whole, if you could pass on my well wishes to the group and/or the individuals you know I would appreciate it.

Thank you again for all of your support,
Mike

Title: PHP::$unicode->i18n()

Description:
PHP 6 brings fully functional and mature Unicode support to the Web world. This talk will cover all the layers of the PHP (bread)/Unicode (butter)/i18n (jam) sandwich. Come and find out how to work with locales, use collation to compare and sort strings, and format numbers, currencies, and dates for any country in the world. Bring your appetite because the toasty goodness is waiting.

When: Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 7pm
Where: CNET Networks: 235 2nd St, San Francisco, CA  94518

You can RSVP on the SF PHP Meetup’s site or just show up.  I always like it when people RSVP so that I know how much food to buy.  But it isn’t a prereq or anything.

EDIT: I just saw that Terry mentioned PB&J and I like the idea.  So PB&J it is; plus the usual chips, sodas, candy, etc. of course.