If you ever needed to display reports of information in a visual way in your web application then you’ll appreciate Open Flash Chart.

This flash based charting library has everything. From line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, mixed line/bar graphs and more with the ability to add hovers, custom colors, sizes and web links. The quality of these charts is remarkable. If you have ever used Google Analytics, these charts and graphs match, if not surpass, in quality.

If you have not herd, Sun Microsystems is acquiring MySQL. I think this is a great move, especially since Sun has embraced the open source community as strong, if not stronger, than other large companies such as IBM, Yahoo and Google.

Article: http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/sun-to-acquire-mysql.html

I think the move is a good one for MySQL. With the recent purchase of the InnoDB storage engine by Oracle, there has been some concern that MySQL could end up in the hands of a company that’s best interests do not involve the open source community.

The recent influx of participation in the development of MySQL by Google gives me a lot of hope that MySQL’s future will be a bright one. The next generation storage engine called Falcon hopes to become a replacement for InnoDB and many of the performance tweaks Google has implemented over the years will most likely find their way into the future versions of MySQL.