How Software is Built

Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: David Campbell

In this interview with David Campbell we talked to him about:

• His background with the SQL Server team and Microsoft
• What about planning, implementation, testing, delivery, and servicing do you think are unique to a product as high profile and critical as SQL Server.
• The Security Development Lifecycle and SQL Server.
• Usability and SQL Server’s Development.
• His experience with OpenSource databases.
• How much the experiences of mySQL and other open source databases have affected SQL Server’s development.

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Interviewers:
Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Josh Berkus

In this interview with Josh, PostgreSQL Core Team Lead at Sun Microsystems Inc., we asked him about:

• How PostgreSQL fits into the landscape of open source databases
• New uses of PostgreSQL
• How new code and features are selected for PostgreSQL
• Quality control and maintenance of code
• Core maintainers and code contributors
• How contributors participate in PostgreSQL development
• Differences between open and closed source database
• Variations between PostgreSQL products
• PostgreSQL Windows users and Microsoft support

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart, Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Jay Pipes

Jay Pipes

In this interview, we speak with Jay Pipes North American Community Relations Manager at MySQL.

We talk about:

• How MySQL Community and Enterprise servers are nothing like RedHat Fedora and RHEL.
• The nuances of MySQL licensing.
• It’s built mostly like traditional software, with 120 developers on staff at MySQL.
• But that’s changing, the worklog system has been opened to the community and they’re starting to take contributions.
• For that to happen, MySQL has to become more modular and support plug-ins.
• MySQL supports so many platforms through a portability layer, which was a lot of work initially, but now it’s pretty well baked.
• Bugs = Gold.
• The tenets of MySQL: performance, reliability, and ease of use.
• It’s easier for proprietary software to make money, it’s easier for open-source to get work done.
• And finally, how to get involved.

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