The globetrotting Colin Charles, chief evangelist for MariaDB, will be giving a talk on "MariaDB: Viable MySQL Replacement" at SCALE 12X. The SCALE Team caught up with him and he answered a few questions in this interview.
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your background?
A: I'm Colin Charles, a Malaysian who travels the world quite a bit. I'm currently the Chief Evangelist for MariaDB at SkySQL Ab. I've been involved with using MySQL since about 2000, and have worked on MySQL since 2005 (MySQL sold to Sun Microsystems, left before Sun became Oracle, joined Monty Program and merged with SkySQL in 2013). Daily work includes consultancy, engineering, and preparing for speeches & delivering them. Before working for MySQL, I actively worked on the Fedora Project during its infancy, and managed to also work on OpenOffice.org long before that.
Q: You're giving a talk on "MariaDB: Viable MySQL Replacement." Without tipping your hand on the actual talk, can you give us an idea of what we might expect?
A: One might expect to see why MariaDB is a viable MySQL replacement. The fact that it is touted as a "drop-in replacement", and is fully "backwards compatible" with MySQL is a bonus. The additional features a MySQL user will be able to get from MariaDB is what an attendee will also get out from it.
Q: Is this your first visit to SCALE? If so, what are your expectations? If not, can you give us your impressions of the event?
A: This is my second visit to SCALE. I came a few years ago when it was in January, but haven't managed to make it usually in February as my father's birthday coincides with SCALE. This year, scheduling just worked out and I'll be back in time for his birthday.
I love SCALE. Its a large, community oriented event that has lots of high quality technical content. The expo halls are fun (I got great insight from visiting the last time), and the networking is priceless throughout the Hilton LAX.
Q: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A: Come to my talk on MHA as well - its about achieving MySQL High Availability & Automatic Failover using MHA. I'm landing a few hours before at LAX so I sincerely hope all is well and I make it on time.
See you at SCALE, go to the SkySQL booth for some freebies, and say hi, and stump me with questions. I love answering them and meeting new people.
Thank you for having me!
[SCALE Team interview by Larry Cafiero]