The Keene View on Web 2.0, Ajax and SaaS

I wrote earlier about the kinder, gentler open source CEO. Now we are seeing that nice guys like MySQL's CEO Marten Mickos can finish first. The Sun acquisition of MySQL (also here in the WSJ)is not just an endorsement of the open source business model, it is also an endorsement of the MySQL culture.

I first got to know Marten several years ago when we were both trying to pull a soured business relationship between MySQL and a former business partner out of the ditch. That salvage effort proved unsuccessful, but I was struck by Marten's maturity and ethics, two character traits not always common among Silicon Valley CEOs.

In Jonathan Schwartz' announcement of the Sun acquisition in his blog, he adopted (no doubt unintentionally) the Stanford motto "die Luft der Freiheit weht" (the winds of freedom blow). The freedom offered by MySQL extends well beyond their database to the vibrant add-on community that surrounds MySQL.

As my wife likes to say when she reads about yet another messed up tech company (not infrequently one run by her husband), "the fish rots from the head down." The converse of course is also true. Companies run by people with a clear vision can see that vision reach far beyond the boundaries of their organization.

Sun can greatly accelerate MySQL's push into the enterprise. This of course is good news for WaveMaker, as we are already partnering with MySQL to provide a visual development platform for enterprise developers to replace their existing client/server tools, be they Oracle Forms, Lotus Notes, PowerBuilder or MS Access.

Labels: marten mickos, mysql, sun, WaveMaker

The MySQL developer community just published an article I wrote on migrating MS Access applications to MySQL.

The Enterprise Web 2.0 revolution is happening at the edges of the organization (democracy always enters by the side door). As proof of this, a recent MySQL user survey showed that 20% of MySQL users are using MySQL to port MS Access applications (in fact, this is the largest single segment of MySQL users!)

This article came out of a Birds of a Feather session at the MySQL User Conference. It summarizes best practices, tricks and tips for turning “fat client” MS Access apps into open-source, Web 2.0 apps using MySQL and ActiveGrid studio. Stay tuned for a joint ActiveGrid/MySQL webinar in early October, to be followed by a seminar tool and a sitcom spinoff on YouTube.

Labels: access, migration, mysql