JFG Posted on the Percona Community Blog - A Nice Feature in MariaDB 10.3: no InnoDB Buffer Pool in Core Dumps

I just posted an article on the Percona Community Blog.  You can access it following this link:

• A Nice Feature in MariaDB 10.3: no InnoDB Buffer Pool in Core Dumps

I do not know if I will stop publishing posts on my personal blog or use both, I will see how things go.  In the rest of this post, I will share why I published there and how things went in the process.

So there is a Percona Community Blog.  Their goal is to provide a platform for members of the open source database community to exchange ideas and knowledge, make suggestions and sound out ideas.  You can look at their Hello World to know more about this new initiative.

At Percona Live, I was approached by Lorraine Pocklington, Community Manager at Percona.  She asked me if I would be interested to post content on the Percona Community Blog.  I have to confess that I was reluctant at first:

• I already have a MySQL blog: what's in it for me ?
• Posting on someone else's blog is painful, especially the first time: it involves learning new tools, fitting in an unknown process, and more time consuming things...

But thinking about it a little more, I warmed up to the idea.  I consider myself part of the MySQL Community, and this community is very important for me.  I want to be an enabler and supporter for this community.  Percona and I share common values there, and publishing content on the Percona Community Blog is a way for me to encourage this initiative.  I hope more people will follow, and not just in publishing on the Percona Community Blog, but also by encouraging community initiatives.

So I contacted back Lorraine three days ago telling her that I have a post for the Percona Community Blog (as you can see, things happened very fast...).  The post was mostly ready for my blog, so I sent her a preview link asking her if she was interested to publish it.  The answer was positive !

ANY content and ANY opinion are welcome
on the Percona Community Blog

I have to say that I was not expecting a fully positive answer.  From my post, someone could imply that MariaDB is better than Percona Server (and in respect to the specific feature I am covering, this is the case), so I was not sure Percona would want to associate with my content.  However, I quickly understood that they were not in the business of censorship, and that ANY content and ANY opinion are welcome on the Percona Community Blog (as long as it is relevant to open source databases, is factual and/or well argumented, and not libelous).

I shared a Google Doc with Lorraine and we collaborate on the content to improve it.  The improvements were mostly in readability and in English quality.  I want to state again that Percona did not try to influence the main message of my post.  I really liked the approach !

Percona did not influence the main message of my post

Once done with proof-reading, Lorraine imported the content in their WordPress interface.  I was given an author access to do the last reviews and edits.  When I was ready, Lorraine pressed the publish button, and that was it !

So my experience with the Percona Community Blog is very positive:

• I felt free to post the content I wanted,
• Lorraine made it easy for me to work with the new tools,
• I was given full access to edit and review my content before publication.

I felt very little "process" throughout this exercise.  I also feel that Lorraine's goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to post on the blog.  Maybe it is not the best medium for someone like me who already has a blog, but if this is your case, I would encourage you to try and see if you like it: the next time you are ready to publish something on your blog, consider sending a mail to Lorraine to see if she wants to publish your content.  If you do not already have a blog, there are clear benefits for you to try the Community Blog as it looks to me that Percona is deeply invested in assisting and making is easy for people to share what they have to say (and Lorraine will help you with proof-reading your content, which is a big plus).

Happy blogging to all !