mariao8kc: Money Making Secrets

Facebook has one of the largest deployments of the open source database MySQL, and the techies responsible for the care and feeding of this installment will divulge some of their secrets tomorrow night at company headquarters. If you can’t make it down to the event in Palo Alto, you can watch a live webcast of it on Facebook Live.

The database houses essential information about the more than 500 million people who have accounts on the social network. With about half of the members logging on daily, the system is incredibly busy — understatement! So it’s hardly a surprise that Facebook has three different teams of techies caring for the SQL installation: operations, performance and engineering groups, to be exact.

The level of service that Facebook demands from this database calls for special tweaks. The social network has its own patch for MySQL and engineering team continues to upgrade this software. The evolution of this development will be part of the presentation tomorrow night.

Most open-source software comes in a free version, with more advanced ones costing money. MySQL has three levels of paid subscriptions, and the most advanced one prices at $10,000 a year for one to four sockets. The most advanced one boasts the kinds of features that Facebook needs:

Whether you’re racing to introduce a new service, or trying to manage an avalanche of data in real time, your database has to be scalable, fast and highly available to meet ever-changing market conditions and stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

MySQL Cluster is the industry’s only real-time transactional relational database combining 99.999% availability with the low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of open source. It features a “shared-nothing” distributed architecture with no single point of failure to assure high availability and performance, allowing you to meet your most demanding mission-critical application requirements.

MySQL Cluster’s real-time design delivers predictable, millisecond response times with the ability to service tens of thousands of transactions per second. Support for in-memory and disk based data, automatic data partitioning with load balancing and the ability to add nodes to a running cluster with zero downtime allows linear database scalability to handle the most unpredictable workloads.

MySQL Cluster delivers carrier-grade availability and performance, with the flexibility of open source software

MySQL Cluster eliminates the need for expensive shared storage, and runs on a range of commodity platforms, making it the most open and cost-effective database solution for mission critical applications.

The discussion of Facebook’s database deployment seems like the a brilliant response to news of the minor dip in Facebook’s availability rate this past quarter. The timing of the presentation couldn’t be better: this social network has a lot more demand put on it than much of the competition, and what better way is there to make the point than to lift up the hood?

OH, THANK HEAVEN� BIPARTISANSHIP IS DELICIOUS: OpenSecrets.org's own Megan Wilson reports that 7-Eleven, the maker of the frozen Slurpee beverage, is cashing in on President Barack Obama�s joke that Republicans have been �sipping on Slurpees� while Democrats have been hard at work. A "Slurpee Summit" was suggested to unite the two parties at the White House, and 7-Eleven took over.

Starting in its headquarters city of Dallas, the company began a tour that eventually led them to Washington D.C.�s Union Station on Thursday -- one of the closest Metro stops to the U.S. Capitol -- where the company gave out free Slurpees and T-shirts that stated, �Party animals unite.� It features an elephant silhouette lifting a Slurpee to a donkey silhouette.

� John Boehner and Obama rescheduled their Slurpee summit, but we didn�t,� said one 7-Eleven worker handing out the free shirts as he smiled.

�D.C. OR BUST� read a sign posted on the portable Slurpee dispenser outside the popular Metro stop.

7-Eleven is a modest financial player in politics, with its political action committee usually donating around $10,000 to $20,000 to federal candidates each election cycle. However the PAC has not donated money during the 2010 election cycle. 7-Eleven spent more than $1.25 million on lobbying from 1999 to 2006 when it ended its federal lobbying presence. 7-Eleven became a subsidiary to Seven & I Holdings Co. in 2005, and since 2007 it has spent $510,000 on lobbying. In 2010, Seven & I Holdings was the 35th highest lobbying spender within the retail industry, according to the Center's research.

In the 2008 election cycle, its corporate PAC gave $9,500 to federal-level candidates -- 10 Republicans and four Democrats. It also gave $500 to Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess�s PAC, the Lone Star Leadership PAC. In that same cycle, 7-Eleven�s corporate PAC received a $9,000 donation from Shell Oil.

According to the company, it sells enough Slurpees each year to fill 12 Olympic-size swimming pools.

CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS IN THE NEWS: The Center's annual release of congressional members' personal finance reports was released on Wednesday and since then has been picked up by most major news organization in the nation.

Highlights include the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, CBS News, CNBC, Fox News and National Public Radio. On Wednesday, the Center for Responsive Politics was on the comedy show, The Colbert Report, as host Steven Colbert used the Center's website to show Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is "the guy who gets the most cash from the oil industry."

Have a news tip or link to pass along? We want to hear from you! E-mail us at press@crp.org.

eric seiger do

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Money Making Secrets

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