This post was initially published on Oracle’s blog; this is a slightly modified version.
The preFOSDEM MySQL Belgian Days 2025, held on January 30th and 31st at the ICAB Incubator in Brussels, was a remarkable gathering of MySQL enthusiasts, developers, and experts. This year’s event was particularly special as it marked the commencement of celebrations for MySQL’s 30th anniversary.
The event was very popular, and with more than 150 participants, we had to open a second room for some sessions.
Day 1: Community and Ecosystem
The first day was dedicated to the MySQL ecosystem, featuring a series of insightful sessions from community members and industry leaders.
Attendees had the opportunity to delve into various topics, including several third-party solutions, best database management practices, and user experiences.
The collaborative atmosphere fostered engaging discussions, allowing participants to share experiences and knowledge.
The day started with David Ducos discussing how mydumper can be used to masquerade logical dumps. The session was exciting. As we all know, MySQL Shell and mydumper have a healthy competition that covers performance and features, with the user ultimately winning.
Marcelo Altmann and Tanmay Sinha continued with a session about ReadySet, a smart query caching solution they introduced last year.
After, Lukas Vileikis presented his book and explained the motivations behind it. He also brought some books that he signed on Friday afternoon. Alkin Tezuysal also signed some of his books during the books-signing session we organized.
Harshit Gangal and Manan Gupta explained how Vitess handles Atomic Distributed Transactions, which is an actual implementation of a two-phase commit in a distributed environment.
Alexander Rubin replaced Sveta Smirnova‘s session—thanks again for his flexibility and availability. He gave a fantastic talk about security: the confused deputy problem. With technical skills and predictable DBA social engineering, this is a must-see session!
After Lunch, Daniël van Eeden presented the powerful toolset of the go-mysql library he’s maintaining. It was cool to see how it works with replication, for example.
Then, Mohamed Wadie Nsiri explained the best practices he has implemented at Canonical for running MySQL on K8s. My favorite advice from his session is, “Do you really(!) need to run your MySQL fleet on K8s?” 😉
During the afternoon break, we had the privilege of eating a lovely cake to celebrate MySQL’s 30th anniversary!
We started the last block of sessions with René Cannaò presenting the latest development of ProxySQL. It’s always nice to see how fast the product is evolving.
Peter Zaitsev then shared a less technical and more accessible talk than what he used us, about 17 things developers need to know about MySQL. It was nice to see the audience’s reaction when Peter asked what the biggest QPS rate people measured while benchmarking MySQL, and Dimitri K replied that 4M QPS was!
Yes, CERN is using MySQL! Abel Cabezas Alonso explained all the details about it.
The day ended with Arnaud Adant praising MySQL’s replication and how it uses it to replicate to ClickHouse.
Day 2: Engineering Insights
The second day focused on the contributions and advancements of the MySQL engineering team at Oracle. Engineers presented on various subjects, from upcoming features in MySQL Server to enhancements in the MySQL HeatWave Database Service available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and other cloud vendors.
These sessions gave attendees a deeper understanding of MySQL’s technical progress and future direction.
Scott Stroz started the day with a topic any devs should be interested in: testing done right! Scott explained how easy it is to use Testcontainers to run unit tests and more complex tests with MySQL.
We continued the day with Dimitri Kravtchuk, who delivered an overview of what has been achieved over the past few years.
The audience was very interested in compression algorithms and performance. Kudos to Dimitri, who, by popular demand, added his famous hilarious slides at the last minute!
Norvald Ryeng presented the new MySQL Hypergraph Optimizer, which is in development and already enabled on MySQL HeatWave. New and better query plans ahead.
Cagri Balkesen delivered a very insightful session about MySQL HeatWave’s architecture and optimizations. An attentive audience asked questions, and the secrets behind HeatWave are attracting increasing interest.
After lunch, I presented a session about InnoDB Primary Keys, promising everyone to learn something. The bet was won, and I learned something myself. Thank you, JFG, for the remark about the recent improvement vis-à-vis replication.
Then, Scott returned to the scene to share his list of hidden gems in MySQL Shell. Again, it was a nice and entertaining session.
Cagri also came back on stage to talk about MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse, specifically how the service in OCI handles data in the Object Store directly.
Then Milos Vasic presented HeatWave GenAI: what it is, what’s part of it, the challenges, and some usage examples. GenAI is now inseparable from databases.
We ended the day’s sessions with Harin Vadodaria presenting the last enhancements in MySQL Server Security for Community and Enterprise Edition. Sometimes security changes lead to some efforts like removing the native_password authentication plugin, but they are necessary, and everybody understands that… but still gently complains 😉
MySQL Rockstars 2024
At the end of the day, before the MySQL Community dinner, we also had the MySQL Rockstars 2024 awards ceremony. More on this will be published very soon, but in the meantime, congratulations to all new rockstars!
30th Anniversary Celebrations
The event included special commemorations to celebrate MySQL’s 30-year milestone. Participants received exclusive items featuring a unique 30th-anniversary logo.
The celebratory cake-cutting ceremony was highlighted, symbolizing MySQL’s enduring presence and evolution in the open-source community.
More info and pictures can be found here.
Networking and Community Engagement
Beyond the formal sessions, the event offered ample networking opportunities. The informal gatherings allowed attendees to connect with peers, discuss challenges, and explore collaborative solutions. The presence of MySQL engineers provided a unique chance for direct interaction, enabling participants to gain insights straight from the source.
We were also delighted to host several customers, and based on the feedback I received, they appreciated both days.
Looking Ahead
The success of the preFOSDEM MySQL Belgian Days 2025 sets a positive tone for the upcoming year-long celebrations of MySQL’s 30th anniversary.
With plans for additional major events across various regions, including Asia, the Middle East, and South America, the global MySQL community has much to anticipate.
For those who couldn’t attend, session recordings and materials will be made available online, ensuring that the knowledge and insights shared during the event reach a broader audience.
Videos are slowly published in the YouTube playlist; some are already available!
We thank all speakers, attendees, and the MySQL Community Team for making this event a memorable success. Here’s to another decade of innovation and collaboration in the MySQL community!
See you soon for another great event in California: MySQL & HeatWave Summit
