Interview with Lenz Grimmer

Lenz Grimmer (yes, jokes have been made about the similarity of Lenz' first name with my last name) is my first non-developer interview. However, he does play a very important role within software engineering at MySQL AB, as you will see!

What is your job within MySQL?

Lenz: The official title is "Senior Production Engineer" - I perform the release building of MySQL. In a way, I perform the "final assembly" of MySQL as a product. My main tasks are building the binary releases of MySQL and maintaining the required infrastructure for this. Once our developers have fixed all identified bugs and added all new planned features, my fellow team members and I (to clarify, I work in a small group of three people, which belongs to our internal QA organization) get in to gear and compile the source code on all our available platforms. We then package, test and distribute the resulting binaries along with the source code, write up the release announcement and send it out via our announcement mailing list.

What specific project that you were involved with are you most proud of?

Every release of MySQL that we publish is a new achievement :)

What has been your biggest challenge?

Taking over the whole release building process from Monty and acquiring the required experience, especially in respect to the many different Unix platforms we support - I am a Linux guy and at first I was quite shocked, faced with so many different Unix flavors!

I can imagine. Next to the regular releases, is there a specific project you are currently working on?

I am currently working on improving our internal build and testing processes to reduce our turnaround time for releases. This involves overhauling our current build script framework, which is mostly written in Perl and Shell.

Please tell us a bit more about your background, and your age (if you are willing to tell)?

Sure, I am 33 years old. I studied computer science at the Berufsakademie in Mannheim. After finishing my diploma, I worked for a small Internet startup company as a systems administrator and developer. This is where I first worked with MySQL and was immediately hooked. Before joining MySQL, I worked 4 years at SUSE Linux AG in N�rnberg, Germany.

Where do you live and work now? Do you work at home or at an office?

I live and work in Hamburg, Germany. I do work from my home office, a light room with large windows and a nice view into our garden. My main workstation is a PC, running Linux. But most of my work is performed on the various build hosts which are located in our data center in Uppsala, Sweden. Therefore I am very dependent on a fast Internet connection - I currently use a 3 Mbit/s DSL line to access the build hosts.

As you used to work in a regular office environment before, how do you like the arrangement with MySQL?

I must say that I really enjoy working for MySQL. Working from home may not be everybody's preference, but I like the freedom and flexibility of working that way very much. The advantage of working at home is that work is around the corner - no commuting in crowded subway trains or waiting in rush hour. The disadvantage is that work is around the corner :) it's challenging to not work too much and trying to maintain a good balance between work and leisure time. Especially for a computer geek like me...

So how about that leisure time?

I currently spend most of my time finishing the renovation of our house and doing some gardening. For relaxation, my wife and I enjoy watching movies, going to the sauna, and going out with friends.

How long have you been with the company, and how did you join?

In MySQL terms I could almost be considered an "oldtimer" - I started working for MySQL in April, 2002. As I mentioned, I used to work for SUSE Linux AG. One of my tasks there was maintaining the MySQL RPM packages for the Linux distribution. Therefore I was already quite familiar with building MySQL on various Linux architectures and I had met both Monty [Widenius, co-founder and CTO] and David [Axmark, co-founder] on various Linux/Open Source events before. During one email exchange about a technical problem, I raised the question whether there might be a place for someone like me inside MySQL. I did this more out of curiosity, but one thing led to another and I decided to leave SUSE after four years. It was not an easy decision, as I really enjoyed working at SUSE, but it was a great opportunity and I am quite happy to have made the switch. We really liked the notion of being able to work from any location and decided to move away from N�rnberg to Hamburg.

And why specifically did you want to work for MySQL?

The friendly atmosphere, attitude and the Open Source spirit of Monty and the other MySQL people. And the challenge of helping MySQL to become the most popular Open Source Database :)

Eep, that's nearly marketing speak. So you were already a MySQL user before you joined the company, tell us a bit about that time...

I first learned about MySQL after my studies. My first employer was a very early adopter of what's nowadays known as the "LAMP" stack. Back then, they created dynamic web sites with Linux, Apache, mSQL and PHP/FI. One of my first tasks was to convert all of their projects from mSQL to MySQL - I was quite impressed by how easy this was. This must have been around MySQL 3.22.something - I don't remember exactly. But since then I was a great fan of MySQL, especially in combination with PHP and Perl.

Did you submit any patches or code?

As I am not a very experienced C/C++ programmer, I was not able to contribute a lot (code-wise) by myself in the past. However, I forwarded all important patches that we had to create for getting MySQL to run smoothly on SUSE Linux.

Well, that's important too! Were you involved with the MySQL Community as well?

I used to follow the public MySQL mailing lists, but was unfortunately not able to keep up with the volume. If my time permits, I still enjoy going to Open Source and Linux trade shows and events. I currently don't get to go as often as I would like to, but I hope to change that once our release building process has been improved and causes me less work :)

You're quite a storyteller, I think this should make for an excellent article. Great! Is there anything else you would like to say or tell?

I am very excited to be able to help Open Source Software to become a viable alternative for commercial software. It was very thrilling to be part of SUSE, when Linux slowly started to become so popular and revolutionized the OS landscape. And it's truly fascinating to see something similar happening in the database market as well. I am glad to be a part of this process. These are interesting times for a software person.

Whom of our developers (and non-developers) should also be interviewed?

All of them in the long run! Let them talk about what they do - everybody plays an important role. I would try to pick a colourful mixture of all departments: sales, marketing, support, admin staff. Don't rule anybody out!

Can you provide me with at least a photo of you, outside of your work environment?

See file attached! That's me - reading my favourite IT magazine (c't) on our wooden deck in the backyard.

Perfect. And thanks very much for your time!

My pleasure.