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MySQL 5.0 Candidate Released
Brian "Krow" Aker (Former Slashdot Coder now MySQL Employee) writes "I am pleased to announce the release candidate for MySQL 5.0. This version has been in development now for three years. We have worked to add update-able views, ansi stored procedures, and triggers. In addition we have added a number of fun features that we are experimenting with and resolved issues with bad data inserts (which personally annoyed the hell out of me when we rewrote Slashdot a couple of years back so I am happy to see this issue go away). We look forward to feedback on the candidate and will show some love for bug reports."
It's time for somebody to do a new, impartial study regarding the performance and feature benefits of this new release of MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, SQLite, and perhaps other open-sourced relational databases.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Every time any database is mentioned on Slashdot we get a load of comments about how MySQL is not a "real" database because it doesn't support {insert random feature here}.
Is it a real database yet?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Specifically:
* MySQL is free use for those who are 100% GPL. If your application is licensed under GPL or compatible OSI license approved by MySQL AB, you are free to ship any GPL software of MySQL AB with your application ('application' means any type of software application, system, tool or utility). You do not need a separate signed agreement with MySQL AB, because the GPL license is sufficient. We do, however, recommend you contact us as there usually are good opportunities for partnership and co-marketing.
* Under the Open Source License, you must release the complete source code for the application that is built on MySQL. You do not need to release the source code for components that are generally installed on the operating system on which your application runs, such as system header files or libraries.
* Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute. As long as you never distribute the MySQL Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not.
* You are allowed to modify MySQL Software source code any way you like as long as the distributed derivative work is licensed under the GPL as well.
* You are allowed to copy MySQL binaries and source code, but when you do so, the copies will fall under the GPL license.
* Optional GPL License Exception for PHP. As a special exception, MySQL AB gives permission to distribute derivative works that are formed with GPL-licensed MySQL software and with software licensed under version 3.0 of the PHP license. You must obey the GNU General Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than code licensed under version 3.0 of the PHP license.
* FLOSS License Exception. We have created a license exception which enables Free/Libre and Open Source software ("FLOSS") to be able to include the GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries despite the fact that not all open source licenses are compatible with the GPL (this includes the PHP license version 3.0). Read more about the FLOSS License Exception.
Considering the new license and still lacking features, there is little reason to use MySQL. Postgres has "all that anda bag of potato chips."
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
How do you want it to compare?
Source code quality is not easy to compare. At a first glance, MySQL is doing very good. They have this nice blurb about only having 1 defect in 4000 lines being more then 4 times better then with most commercial software. But if you dig deeper, you notice that PostgreSQL has been tested by the same company and only had 1 defect in every 39000 lines of code. Wow, so PostgreSQL must really be a lot better then MySQL.
But if you dig even deeper, you will find some explanation from a PostgreSQL developer and you remember what your mother told you about lies, damned lies and statistics.
You want to know about source code quality? Go read the source.
The point is that, even in recent versions, MySQL has some serious limitations that other OSS databases (e.g. PostgreSQL) do not suffer from, and no really significant corresponding advantages. MySQL was not designed from the ground up to be many things it is now trying to be--it was not designed to support transactions, it was not designed to support foreign keys, it was not designed to support stored procedures. It was initially conceived as a small, fast database for managing very large datasets in a warehousing sort of role. PostgreSQL, on the other hand, was always conceived of as being a heavier-duty database, and this shows in terms of feature completeness and SQL standard compliance.
Given that the performance differential (which was always overstated) has been overcome, why would you want to go with MySQL only to discover what the latest feature to be missed was? What's the advantage to MySQL?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Before all the MySQL bashing starts can we please stop and have an intelligent conversation? The bottom line is that MySQL works great! For all those people who say .. "ya its a kids toy" well look at some of the sites and companies that are using mysql.. "Friendster" , "The Friendfinder network" , "Yahoo!" .. These sites each have millions of active members and are running just fine. Where else can you load up a 50+ database cluster and not have to shell out a fortune on licensing fees? All the developer tools are great!!
> And Oracle 7 for the two years before -- in a not-so-large database -- I think there is not much to fear...
Actually, no: many databases these days are now supporting various types of logs - in which you've got tables with tens of millions of rows. Oracle and DB2 have the following in place to support massive tables:
1. query parallelism - that provides linear performance improvements up to 4 cpus or so
2. data partitioning - that allows the database to just scan data needed, rather than entire table when indexes aren't appropriate (b-tree indexes only work for around 1-3% of data)
3. materialized views - in which views actually hold data - and this data is kept up to date by the database server. Often used for summary tables.
3. query rewrite - in which your queries are automatically re-written to apply to a summary table (see materialized view) if one exists.
4. clustering - in which data spans multiple servers, and all servers work together on your query.
5. smart optimizer - intelligent score-based optimization responsible for determination of best access paths for your queries.
With the above features db2 or oracle can drive 40x the performance of mysql or postgresql in a reporting application (or transaction one with a few large scan-oriented tables) on identical hardware (say a 4-way SMP). If you didn't see an impact from these features then either you have one of the fairly rare apps that can't benefit, or you should revist the design.
Don't get me wrong - I really like postgresql. But neither it nor mysql is even in the ballpark for performance on db2 or oracle. Nor is the price much different - db2 is only around $700 for 4/5 of the above features on a 2-way smp vs $500 for mysql. Eventually mysql & postgresql will support these features. But it'll probably be five years before they are working well.
is often the better database solution, I'll still be using MySQL. Why? Well a quick search on cwjobs shows 188 jobs requiring MySQL experience vs 7 for postgres!! Its a real shame but having used the best tool (C++ Builder) for my last job and then being unemployed for @2 years because people wanted either VC++ or Unix based C++ experience; I *WONT* be making the same mistake again!
Anyways, that said, Ive already played about with 5.011 and apart from the yukky syntax one has to use to support transactions it seems quite stable. Its might have taken a long time for them to finally make it a "real" database product but it seems good enough for small databases.
One of my next jobs is to test it with 10 million + records and see how it performs though so my assessment may be premature...
No true.
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Those gotchas all (mostly) go away if you run MySQL 5.0 in strict mode. Compatibility mode is provided for 4.1 and back-asswards behaviour if you need it.
See: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/server-sql-mode
Martin
The only so-called "database" that emphasizes it's GUI is Access. Every other vendor/product I'm aware of relies of separation of duties and doesn't try to roll user interfacing into what is rightly a back-end service.
Administration tools for commercial and OSS databases may be easy for small sites and novice DBA's that don't know their tools, but large applications rely on database scripts to handle configuration, not GUIs. The reason is simple: you can't put a mouse click into CVS/RCS/SCCS/???.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
AFAIK the clustering and load balancing 'solution' for MySQL means your entire database has to fit in memory. Not very practical...
Hmm... I'm no database person but if you're creating a table that only allows a value of up to 127 and go over that, I would expect it to give you 127. What would a real database do?
Return an error and don't make the insert.
There isn't?
I just finished a project that accesses SQL Server from a Linux/Apache/mod_perl app using ODBC via the FreeTDS drivers. (Don't ask, client requirement.)
Granted, not all of the unixodbc drivers are free. But then, they aren't in MS land either, although you might not notice because you're paying for them via a bundle.
I forget what 8 was for.