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MySQL 4 Declared Production-Ready
Simprini writes "After absolute ages of testing MySQL 4.0.x in various versions of BETA through GAMMA it looks like MySQL AB finally released MySQL 4.0.12 as ready for prime-time production use. I know my company has been waiting for a long time for this because our customers absolutely refused to use beta releases of this product. Query caching here we come."
I think the InnoDB allows FK constraints (and InnoDB is included now)
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/SEC458.html
We have been using 4.x for Slashdot for some time now. Its quite stable and the new query cache seems to be working for around 13% of our queries, which has been a great boon for us.
You can't grep a dead tree.
What other features might there be?
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Free your mind.
The InnoDB table type, which is now a part of the standard production release, supports transactions, row locking, and foreign keys.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
But, as the MySQL developers say, nobody appears to want views badly enough to finance their development. That's how MySQL got as developed as it is now--enough corporate users needed specific new pieces of functionality that they could pay MySQL AB to build them. It's one of the best open-source business models I've ever seen.
It's easy to complain. It's easy to preach. I'd rather see you pull out your (or your bosses') wallet.
As for myself, while I'd love the convenience of views, I'm not constrained by legacy code and I don't mind the mild programming burden their absence puts on me.
As one of the testers of the 4.0.x line, I can say that MySQL AB should be proud of this release.
I've seen some posts here about instability and data loss, but I assume this is from the Postgres 'but WE have the better database - everybody look over here' crowd. I've done some pretty stupid things to our MySQL box - like running Imagemagick's 'convert' on over 200MB of images and running the box out of virtual memory, which made the kernel start killing processes - starting with MySQL. When it came back up - no data loss at all. InnoDB recovers VERY well from this sort of thing.
MySQL also handles multiple MS Access clients far better than MS SQL Server. We have over 10 tables now which basically can't be accessed if placed on SQL Server because of the way MS Access grabs record locks willy nilly. If I place the tables in MySQL as MyISAM tables, I get a little bit (3 or 4 months) use out of them. Then record locking issues start up again. So then I put them in MySQL's InnoDB tables with row-level locking, and I've never had any further issues with those tables. Quite impressive.
And as well as being 100% stable for me, MySQL is so incredibly fast... When we convert standard Acccess queries to pass-through queries we get up to 15x speed increases. We actually use pass-through queries as substitues for views. Works nicely.
The tech support it great. When I was having type-conversion issues with our pass-through queries I got responses from the developers on the same day - often in the same hour. And we haven't paid for any support - just downloaded the source.
The lead-up to MySQL-4.0.x being stable has felt like the lead up to Mozilla-1.0; everyone using it felt it was ready, but the developers insisted on thoroughly testing everything to make sure they could stand by their decision to declare it stable.
Congrats to the MySQL team. I will be compiling 4.0.12 when I get to work...
MySQL doesn't "have these features" - some table types "have these features." The same MySQL server can use any of MyISAM, BDB and InnoDB tables; the difference is MyISAM doesn't have transactions, but it's twice as fast as InnoDB which does.
I believe these are due for the 4.1 series. There's a little note about it here
They can really only do two things: hide columns for security reasons and simplify queries by hiding part of that query.
In general, the first applcation is usually better served by planning, data seperation, and implementing a good security policy. There are times when views are a legitimate solution to problems of this type, and a database is definately better for supporting them in such cases.
The second case, however, is commonly misunderstood by developers, who think a view is some magic incarnation of a snapshot. I frequently see views based on views based upon views, frequently each of which is a poorly-optimized sql statement. The developers seem surprised that performance is abysmal in such cases. A view is a just a convenience, a means to "store" a query, and run that query each time the view is accessed, nothing more.
Since I spend a fair bit of time trying to fix performance problems reusulting from the many myths and rumors about views and their ubiquitous misapplication, I'm not sure that I would consider their omission a bad thing -- it might teach developers better coding habits. . .
I keep hearing how postgresql has "caught up" to mySQL plus has all kinds of wonderful features, yet my own testing shows postgresql to be a fair bit slower when you have about an equal mix of selects and updates with a few inserts thrown in here and there. For example, 82 seconds for postgresql, 35 for MyISAM and 49 for InnoDB (not MySQL 4 however) Yes, the postgresql had fsync turned off and the table vacuumed (full & analyze.)
I'd love to use Postgresql, but with mysql adding all these features plus being so much faster, it's hard to move that way, as the fancy features are things I'd use but don't really need. (Previously foreign keys were a reason for me to switch)
Or is there a way to make postgresql keep up to mysql so I can justify using it and right away get access to those cool things like views, triggers, functions, etc ?