MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use

chicagoan writes "MySQL AB today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company's ten-year history. The major new version delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines. Over 30 enterprise platform and tool vendors have also expressed enthusiastic support for the new release of the world's most popular open source database."

Comments

stored procs and triggers, finally

[cerelib]

I have always been amazed thy MySQL has been able to gain the popularity it has without features like stored procs and triggers.

Re:stored procs and triggers, finally

[User 956]

Almost every database out there impliments an ISO or similar SQL standard as it's base (SQL-92 in most cases). They then build on top of that by adding their own features, while still supporting the common SQL syntax. It's not about being a barebones implimentation of a standard, it's about supporting the standard as your base.

PostgreSQL supports SQL-92, while adding it's own extra features (which describes most other databases like Oracle and MS SQL too), including the support of the "LIMIT" statement. MySQL doesn't support any standard base, instead existing as an arbitrary mish mash of standard and propritary SQL. It wasn't until the current version, 4, that MySQL even bothered to add support for UNION.

With every other database you can start working safe in the knowledge that while having it's own extensions, you're working with a normal "SQL" database. MySQL, while posing as SQL, has little if anything in common (in particular see threads about optimization - getting fast code in MySQL means learning an entirely new system filled with quirks and vomit inducing workarounds to solve language faults)

Re:stored procs and triggers, finally

[temojen]

And if its in your code, the query executes using the resources of the machine running your code, as opposed to the resources of that (usually) bigged database server.

This is so wrong it made my head explode. All queries are executed in the server. Stored procedures are compiled and optimized once (per connection, and most sites use connection pooling).

Re:stored procs and triggers, finally

[xelah]

That's an excellent argument for having a layer between applications and the data. Stored procedures are certainly a way to achieve this, but they aren't the only way to achieve it. Is a bunch of, say, Java stored procedures all that different to, say, a Java server which exposes application domain methods via CORBA or J2EE (or whatever), is the only way for the rest of your system to get at the database and contains all of the queries all that different? Not really - and the second method has some advantages (like allowing you to run many copies across many computers). IMHO you really do have to think about your system architecture and it's requirements before making a decision like 'everything goes through SPs'.

Well this is neat

[lewp]

No matter if you're a MySQL supporter or someone who thinks that everyone should use a "real" RDBMS, having all these new features available to MySQL developers is a good thing. There's quite a few apps, I'm sure, that don't use these features in databases where they're available simply because they're aiming for the lowest common denominator that was MySQL's feature set.

Anyway, not trying to start an argument about the relative merits of any particular RDBMS, but this is a good thing all the way around. I look forward to taking it for a spin.

Re:Innovation

[choas]

So there I go, looking up stored procedures on Wikipedia and it gives me this:

Wikipedia has a problem

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Can't contact the database server: Lost connection to MySQL server during query (10.0.0.101))

Well at least I now know you're not a troll and it DOES gave something to do with MySQL ;)

Re:Almost caught up to MSSQL!

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, SQL2K has been one of the most stable databases I've ever worked with. Sybase was a close second, Oracle was fine once you got it installed. Say what you will about their consumer products, but MS can make some damn fine products *when it wants to*.

Re:Generic Web-Frontends for MySQL

[FireFury03]

This is slightly off-topic, but I was wondering if anyone is aware of any generic web-frontends for MySQL?

How about http://www.phpmyadmin.net/?

Why MySQL is popular

[einhverfr]

I stopped using MySQL as my primary RDBMS in 2000 (I still use it when apps require it, but I almost never program for it.

When I started using PostgreSQL 6.5, I noticed that it was *far* harder to use than MySQL. It had a *huge* learning curve and was missing obvious functionality such as alter table drop column. But it provided better data integrity checking than MySQL. So for the next two years, I would prototype databases in MySQL before moving them over to PostgreSQL.

MySQL was good enough for simple CMS type tasks and extremely user friendly at a critical time in the market. PostgreSQL, designed for enterprise apps from the beginning, placed technological soundness ahead of ease of use. However, over the last five years, PostgreSQL has actually become the simpler RDBMS to use and program for. No questions of "I misspelled InnoDB and now it created a MyISAM table instead" or such.

Unfortunately, it seems that by the time PostgreSQL became easy to use, MySQL already had cornered the low-end market. However, I would say that aside from light-weight CMS tasks, PostgreSQL is still far and away the better application for a number of reasons:

1) ACID compliance is pervasive throughout the engine. Creating operations outside a transaction, while possible, requires an untrusted programming language (like C, PL/PerlU, PL/PythonU, etc).

2) Date's Central Rule is designed into the RDBMS and cannot be circumvented by the application (which is not the case in MySQL 5.0 as strict mode can be disabled by an application).

3) PostgreSQL, while not perfectly standards-compliant, is far more standards-compliant than MySQL. This allows for much more portable code to be written for PostgreSQL than MySQL.

4) PostgreSQL is much more extensible than MySQL. You can add language handlers to allow you to create stored procs in whatever languages you want. PostgreSQL currnetly ships with PL/PGSQL, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/TCL. Other languages, such as PL/PHP, PL/Java (or PL/J), PL/SH, and PL/R are available as addons. I believe there is an attempt to make Mono available for stored procedures. Also you can add new data types without too much difficulty.

5) PostgreSQL has better Business Intelligence capabilities than MySQL. Capabilities include table partitioning and more. Parallel queries (across nodes) are under development in a spinoff project called Bizgres.

Re:Almost caught up to MSSQL!

[TheKubrix]

I hope someone mods the parent down, because thats just stupid/ignorant.

I've been running MS SQL 2000 for about 4 years now and it has NEVER crashed. Nor has it corrupted any data or any other such destruction.

I notice that its people that either have _NO_ database experience tend to bash MSSQL, and they don't even know why. Your comment is a case in point.

Unofficial slashdot MySQL thread checklist

[jonfelder]

1. I love MySQL!
2. Who cares? Postgres is and always has been better.
3. I used to use MySQL, but now I don't.
4. I used to not use MySQL, but now I do.
5. If you use MySQL you are stupid.
6. If you do not use MySQL you are stupid.
7. Only Nazis and CowboyNeal use MySQL.
8. Did anyone say goatse.cx?