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."

Comments

Uh, postgres?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does MySQL still do table-level locks and no foreign keys? If so, I'll stick to using a real database.

Slash

[ericdano]

The big question is: When Slashdot is going to start using it?

Having had experience with Oracle, MySQL is still lacking a lot of the plush features that Oracle has. But, having run it for about 3+ years on my own slash type sites, the thing is ROCK solid. The feature set in MySQL increases with every version.

Now, look at the costs. Oracle - an Arm, leg, and your children. MySQL - Free. Gee, that is a no brainer.....

Waiting for maturity

[acostin]

We are also using MySQL for many web projects, but to create a complex CMS the future features in MySQL (that also exist in other current database systems - like postgreSQL and probably others) are needed.

We have initially created Komplete - http://komplete.interakt.ro/ only for PostgreSQL, and our users attitude indicated us that MySQL should have been supported. So we are releasing now the Komplete Lite version (GPL), for MySQL - but it's a real pain to simulate subselects, real unions (emulated with temporary tables now), cascaded deletes and stored procedures.

The speed is quite similar, but PostgreSQL is still much better for complex web applications.

Woho!

[Dri]

I work at at the tech development dept. of a major car company and this is great news. We are finally able to throw MySQL onto production servers and give Oracle the boot for small RAD webapps.

What I've heard from MySQL officials in person is that MySQL 5.0 is set to be released late Q4 this year. Then stored procedures, sub selects (4.1) and constraints should be ready for primetime, then we talk real heavy enterprise applications. Hope they keep the schedule! =)

Well, Monty and the rest, Good Job! Keep it up!

Triggers?

[mshiltonj]

Foreign keys -- Pass
Replication -- Pass
Triggers -- FAIL

SO close.....

Re:Triggers?

[frostman]

The point of triggers is not to handle every possible database interaction, but to maintain your data integrity and business rules, as far as possible, at the database level.

This is important so that people writing client/web applications don't accidentally weaken the data integrity. Database users (including applications) should never be able to accidentally or maliciously break things. Only the DBA gets to do that. ;-)

If you find your triggers blowing up, it's usually because the database is poorly designed.

If you started with something good and the boss is always changing the business rules on you and forcing you to use application code where you should use triggers, that's a tough situation. But if it's your policy, you would do well to learn a bit more about databases.

BTW, Postgres can do triggers in Perl, for what it's worth.

Multi-table deletes

[digitect]

IMO, the very best new feature of MySQL 4 is multi-table deletes. No more having to query/for each in/delete type constructs across many-to-many relationship tables.

I've been using MySQL 4.0.5/PHP4 on RH8.0 without problems to date. Granted, only on a non-critical intranet for our small (70) office, but still, no problems.

Re:Simply powerful or powerfully simple?

[micromoog]

In the process of building features for new users, we have not forgotten requests by the community of loyal users.

What about integrity constraints, foreign keys, interval datatypes, full outer joins, subqueries, set operations, VIEWS for god's sake, and triggers? Too hard?

For cryin' out loud, half of these missing features put the "relational" in "relational database"!

sub selects

[minus_273]

any word on whether we have subselects yet. I couldnt see it in the change log. They are dearly missed..

Faster than PostreSQL?

[Jack William Bell]

I am wondering about caparative processing speed myself. MySQL has always been the speed leader in Open Source databases. Now that they have added some industrial strenght features (like ACID compliant transactions and row level locking) via InnoDB, how well does the speed difference hold up? Is it still way faster, or just a little faster or not faster at all?

If the difference isn't significant then there is no reason to choose MySQL over PostreSQL for applications requiring high levels of data integrity. Especially when PostreSQL also brings you stored procedures, views and so on.

Apparently 90% don't need those features.......yet

[JohnDenver]

What about integrity constraints, foreign keys, interval datatypes, full outer joins, subqueries, set operations, VIEWS for god's sake, and triggers? Too hard?

For cryin' out loud, half of these missing features put the "relational" in "relational database"!

First of all, kudos to the MySQL team for atleast getting as far as they have. Just because I'm not fond of thier product, doesn't mean they don't deserve credit.

I've been banging my head a little on this one too trying to figure out why so many people are pushing MySQL and not something stable and complete like PostgreSQL? After all, PostgreSQL has triggers, stored-procedures, functions, referential integrity, and tons of other features to make your life easier. You may not need all of these features now, but can you honestly say your app won't expand and require advanced features?

Is it the MySQL marketing engine? Does PostgreSQL sound intimidating? Are there actually technical advantages that MySQL have over PostgreSQL? If so, what are they?

The most common argument I've heard in defense of MySQLs lack of basic features is: "It's good enough for 90% of the problems out there." However, everytime they implement a basic feature that every other RDBMS has had for decades (like UNION), people respond as if MySQL is getting close to be taken seriously.

Secondly, In my experience, I've found that 90% of the applications I've worked on end up using those advanced features sooner or later. Those features usually save a tremendous amount of time I would have otherwise had to spend writing code to make my database jump through hoops. In addition to saving time, there a lot of features which simply allow me to make my applications more useful or intuitive to the end user, which is the whole point.

Am I missing something here, or is the Emperor not wearing any clothes?

Re:Uh oh

[DNS-and-BIND]

I thought it was strange that the story submitter said, "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." It's as if he's surprised that customers don't have the same standards as his personal linux box. Sure, they released a new tiny rev today, let's compile it and put it into production!

Re:Why not PostgreSQL?

[gid]

I often wondered this myself, UNTIL I actually tried to sit down and use PostgreSQL. MySQL permissions and everything just made sense, it's all kept in very nice and neat tables and easy to understand by by looking at the tables without having to read any to little documention.

While on the other hand, permissions for PostgreSQL are scattered everywhere. Half of it is config files for who gets allowed in and what type of authentication to what tables, triggers, etc, some are in special PostgreSQL tables that aren't immediately obvious even how to access if you wanted to edit them directly. It's all very confusing.

PostgreSQL is nice, they just need to go that extra mile to make sure user permissions are easy to understand, etc. Do other little things here and there to make the learning curve is not quite as steep.

Intuitive applications are the ones that succeed.

MySQL 4 is good

[chrysalis]

I've been extensively using MySQL 4 for over one year on very loaded production systems.

It has actually always been faster and more solid than the 3.23.x series.

I only had some small issues with InnoDB (the same issues were in 3.23.x as well). But the InnoDB maintainer, Heiki Turri, is someone that really cares about bug reports. All reported bugs were immediately fixed.

The query cache is efficient, and the fulltext indexing was greatly enhanced (if only it worked with InnoDB tables...) .

I've not installed any 3.23.x version for a while, and I'll never go back.

Probably a lot of system administrators will wait. They will read that MySQL AB blessed 4.x as production-ready, but they will wait, as if it was an 1.0 version that still needs some maturity.

It's not. MySQL 4.x has already received a lot of testing, and it is already being used on large production sites. Just read the MySQL mailing-lists.

Upgrading from MySQL 3.x is also easy. You only need to run a little script to upgrade the grant tables (and even if you don't, everything will work). No need to export/reimport the databases. So upgrading is straight forward.

Re:Apparently 90% don't need those features.......

[Trifthen]

We run postgres and we're doing our damndest to get rid of it. We have some databases that get 50-100% data turnover rate daily, making hourly vacuums essential to not having the Ever Expanding Database problem. Not to mention that vacuum doesn't clean up indexes, so you'll also have to re-index periodically if you don't want those to grow to thousands of times their optimal size.

I should probably say that such reindexes require full table locks, so you could get contention issues under heavy load when reindexing your database. Mysql gets by this by making indexes in a temporary space, and switching when the index is done. This means I can select from a table, with full benefit of an existing index, even while I change an index, or even redo the index. Not that I have to... mysql doesn't require vacuum or reindex to avoid continuous linear bloat.

So... we don't like having to babysit our database to get good performance out of it. We're willing to work around lack of foreign keys to avoid having to do full database import/exports on a weekly basis, and multiple hourly cron jobs to make sure we don't randomly fill our disks. Faster? Slower? Who cares. Postgres is just too annoying to use in production.