My talk at the MySQL Users Conference is officially called “Advanced User Defined Functions in MySQL 5,” but if it weren’t too late I’d change the name and call it “SQL as a Glue Language.”

Sometimes logic should be as close to the data as possible; this is why triggers exist in SQL. MySQL 5 gives you a full-fledged programming language (SQL/PSM), lots of utility functions, and (this is where the “glue” comes in) the ability (using UDFs) to plug into existing C and C++ libraries with ease.

I hope to see you all there Tuesday at 4:30, and then at Jeremy & Hartmut’s UDF Hackfest Tuesday night.