Interview with Timour Katchaounov

Timour Katchaounov is a member of the MySQL Optimizer group. From my own experience, this means that the only people who understand what he does will be the other members of the group (and of course, Monty). I sometimes ask Timour when I hack around a bit in the server source - he knows stuff. But in a nutshell, his group makes MySQL faster.

Let's take a gamble, and ask you to describe what you do:

Timour: I work on new features for both the query optimizer and the execution subsystem of the MySQL server. The complexity of these components require one to work in a do-it-all-yourself mode. Typically I go through most phases of the development process - I do both problem analysis, write design specifications, then implement the specifications in code, and finally write tests and documentation.

As former member of the MySQL documentation team, I highly appreciate developers who write about what they do right when they do it! But to continue our conversation, everything you work on lies deep inside the server?

There is seldom anything visible for the users except that my work results in (hopefully) much improved performance. For example, the project I am most proud of so far is my trial project - the "greedy optimizer". The result of this project is that query compilation time may be controlled by the user (or by the server). For big queries with many tables, the use of the "greedy optimizer" allows to reduce query compilation time with orders of magnitude. The real reason I am most proud of this project is that I managed to complete it in the time frame I predicted without being familiar at all with the server code.

A software project that was finished within the projected time? Wow ;-) What are you working on at the moment?

The major task I am currently working on is the design and implementation of hash-join. This is a new join method apart from the current nested-loops join, that is suitable for equi-joins, and thus is supposed to make a big difference for data-warehousing applications.

You are Bulgarian, but I understand you studied outside the country?

My university education started in Bulgaria where I did 3 years of Physics first, then switched to Computer Science and got an M.Sc. degree from New Bulgarian University. My advisor then convinced me that I should continue towards a Ph.D. degree and so in 1998 I was accepted for doctoral studies in Sweden in the database research group of Prof. Tore Risch. After a break as a summer intern at IBM Silicon Valley Lab (where I worked on a feature for DB2 federated DBMS), I defended my Ph.D. degree in Uppsala University, Sweden, specializing in Database Management Systems.

I am back in Sofia now. For me, a Virtual company like MySQL = "freedom", mostly freedom to move and organize yourself. This freedom was the only way I found to go back to my birthplace, and still work in my area for one of the top companies. As many learn after they get this kind of freedom, freedom is hard. Since I work at home, the main challenge is self-organization, and the ability to separate work and rest. The disadvantage is that one stays at home too much, and sometimes it may get lonely not talking to almost anyone for whole days. IRC is good for work, but it can't replace real contact.

What do you do outside of work time?

Since I turned my hobby into my job, I don't have one particular hobby. What I enjoy most is travelling and trying new sports. Last summer I got started with wind-surfing, and this winter I learned fun carving (a kind of downhill skiing style). I still plan to go back to paragliding which I tried some ten years ago :-). I also enjoy meeting my old friends (I am happy to have very diverse friends, mostly outside the computer industry) - this being one of the benfits from leaving where you were born and lived as a kid. Together with my wife we are very fond of delicious food and wine, and we often go out for dinner to one of the many new places in Sofia. I like a good book in a winter evening, but I have to admit that alas, quite seldom - somehow, in the last years work eats up most of my concentration, so I often prefer to watch a movie instead. One thing we don't do at home - no TV. We use our TV set only to watch carefully chosen movies. Of all things, what excites me most (apart from new optimizer features :-) are trips to distant, preferreably non-westernized places.

Indeed, TV is overrated. Back to work (sorry), didn't you meet with some people during your studies, who are now also colleagues?

Well, I was close to finish my Ph.D., and after many discussions with my wife where we'd like to live and what we want to do, we figured we'd really want to go back to our home city (we are both from Sofia). First it looked impossible because few cities in the world have dabase companies, and Sofia is not one of them, and I really wanted to work in my area. One day I heard that the company Alzato (now the MySQL Cluster team) had been acquired by MySQL [from Ericsson Business Innovation]. It happened that two guys at Alzato - Mikael Ronstr�m and Martin Sk�ld - used to be members of the same research lab where I received my Ph.D., and we had even been colleagues with Martin for a year. I got intrigued, read a bit more about MySQL on the Net, and figured that it may be a potential employer, since the company was expanding. Mikael suggested that I send my resume, which I did, and, oh miracle, just a week later I got a mail from David Axmark, MySQL co-founder.

MySQL was my ticket back to my home city, thanks to its distributed model, and I got the opportunity to work in my area of expertise - query processing. MySQL just began growing into a big product, so I thought it would give me the chance to participate in some serious and challenging projects in my area. MySQL is a multi-cultural company, and after my studies abroad I really like to meet different people, one gets a different perspective on life.

After I got hired I learned that I am one of a few unique MySQL employees: I never used MySQL before I started my trial project!