Jonathan Desrosiers

← Community Spotlight

1. How did you get started with MySQL, and what was the version you first used?

I first started using MySQL back in college during the mid-2000s while building some custom websites by hand. I discovered WordPress soon after, and quickly found myself digging through the database structure and how it worked. I don’t recall the exact version, but I believe it was version 4.1.

2. Who in the MySQL community has influenced you the most, and why?

I can’t point to one specific person I’ve been heavily impacted by. Instead, I’d say I’ve been influenced by the many contributors whose work I’ve learned from without ever meeting them: the people who write and maintain the documentation, file detailed bug reports, and explain behavior changes in release notes. As someone who has to think about how WordPress supports many MySQL versions at once, I rely on that openness constantly. It’s a good reminder of why open source works, and I hope to give back in the same way.

3. Which MySQL community event or interaction has stayed with you, and why?

I was fortunate to attend the community-organized EU Summit for the MySQL Community following FOSDEM 2026. It made it very clear how strongly people care about MySQL. Not everyone agrees on where the project should go next, but the debates I participated in came from a shared commitment to making it better for everyone. It was inspiring to be in a room full of people who care so deeply, and it was a reminder of the power of open source.

4. What’s your favorite MySQL feature that you think more people should know about?

Functional indexes are really neat! The longstanding rule was to never wrap an indexed column in a function, or you’d lose the index. Since MySQL 8.0.13, you can index the expression itself, which helps with things like case-insensitive lookups or queries on just part of a date. A query that used to scan the whole table can use that index instead, as long as it uses the same expression.

5. What is one thing about MySQL you wish more people understood?

I wish more people understood that MySQL is still open source at its core, with a community of passionate contributors working to make it better for everyone. It’s easy to take a database for granted when it sits quietly under your application, but a lot of people are working to keep it reliable, and anyone who’s curious can read the source, report bugs, and get involved.

6. What’s the most interesting MySQL problem you’ve had to solve?

I’m going to cheat and choose a problem that’s never truly going to be solved: balancing backwards compatibility with the adoption of cutting-edge features. The WordPress project has a long-standing, staunch commitment to backwards compatibility, and it’s a big reason the software has grown to what it is today.

As a WordPress Core Committer, part of my work is making sure upcoming releases support a wide range of MySQL versions, currently from 5.5.5 onward, while also encouraging the ecosystem to move to modern versions of database software.

Index length is a good example. Older InnoDB row formats limit index key prefixes to 767 bytes per column, so when WordPress moved to utf8mb4, certain indexes were limited to 191 characters (191 × 4 bytes fits under that limit). Newer MySQL versions no longer need that restriction, but it remains in the schema today because WordPress still supports the versions that did. The more site owners we can educate and encourage to upgrade, the more WordPress can take advantage of new MySQL features.

7. What technology other than MySQL are you excited about right now?

At the risk of sounding cliché, AI. It’s already changing everything around us, and will be one of the most impactful technologies in human history.