MySQL 5.1 Improves Performance, Partitioning, Bug Fixes

kylehase writes "CIO.com has a writeup about MySQL's 5.1 release planned for next week. Among the enhancements are many bug fixes from 5.0, some of which may increase performance 20% or more, as well as 'partitioning, events scheduling, row-based replication and disk-based clustering.'"

Comments

Re:When shall we get a decent front end?

[NevarMore]

Fully programmable front-end for a database?

You mean like C, C++, Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, OO Calc, ASP, C# ??

Re:What?!?

[ortholattice]

I don't understand how you can say things like that when HUGE sites like Flickr are MySQL based...and Google uses MySQL code for their DB...

Both of these applications involve non-critical data. Google doesn't care if two separate searches for the same thing, one immediately after the other, give different results (which is often the case, probably due to different servers not being sync'ed to each other, not saying it's a MySQL problem; the point is that the data is loosey-goosey and non-critical). And, you forgot /. itself, which uses MySQL. They definitely don't care about the precision of the data; heck, they still can't even get "page 1 of 2" and "page 2 of 2" not to have overlapping results after 10 years or whatever in business.

I think your case would be better made if you showed a HUGE user of MySQL for financial applications. Does Google use MySQL to handle their general ledger and billing?

I'm Already Gone

[segedunum]

We've already started a migration from MySQL to Postgres, and we're not going back. Full Text Searching was one of the features, but Postgres all round just has a lot more to it. You can make the thing look like an Oracle database if necessary, there's auto vacuuming now, asynchronous commits and a ton of other performance improvements that don't skimp on features.

I really can't see why anyone would choose MySQL now, apart from inertia and backwards compatibility.

Decipher for non DB types

[tji]

I do use databases for various apps and projects, but only enough to do what I need. I am by no means a DB expert.

So, can someone more DB-literate explain some of the new features?

- Disk based clustering: I assume this means I can dynamically expand the size of my database by adding more disks. Is this correct? Does PostgreSQL also support this (my project where this would be handy currently uses pgsql)?

- Partitioning: I can think of several things this could mean.. Splitting data among several tables at some logical dividing point. Or, limiting the size of tables so they can't overrun the complete storage space. What does this mean in MySQL 5.1 terms?

Re:It's nearly caught up to PostgreSQL.

[segedunum]

Personally I wouldn't touch either PGSQL or MySQL in a mission critical environment, they are very nice toy databases

I hear this refrain from every terrified analyst who ever wants to bring up the dreaded subject of open source databases, and I see no hard evidence for it. Sorry, but my bullshit detector goes into overdrive when I hear the phrase 'mission critical' and 'toy databases'. MySQL has its shortcomings, and has generally been the web database backend of choice (and it powers quite a few large 'mission critical' web sites), but Postgres really has been the open source database that has kicked on. Failover? Mirroring? Clustering? Yer, there are ways and means of doing that pretty well, and I have seen ample evidence that it can be trusted with lots of 'mission critical' tasks.

I've managed to start using Postgres in an organisation that has traditionally been all Oracle. The main reasons are the huge cost involved of additional licensing for additional servers, the incredible amount of DBA assistance that all Oracle installations seem to need and which they don't have the resources to provide and Oracle's incredible ability to suck any system resources you have into a black hole on any system. When any 'mission critical' database has the memory footprint of either MySQL or Postgres, and when it can actually start up in time for the end of the next ice age, give me a call.

but when shit hits the fan - and it WILL happen - you need a reliable system with instant failover, which neither database can provide.

An awful lot of people have been waiting an awful long time for that shit to hit the fan - and in the meantime it has cost them an arm and a leg in not only licensing and support costs, but also in a needless waste of system and hardware resources.

Not this crap again...

[Wiseman1024]

When will people realize the licensing issues are *solved* now?

Surely, I can see clueless people 100 years from now still bitching about MySQL's licensing terms.

Re:It's nearly caught up to PostgreSQL.

[growse]

"Phone Sun" I believe is a reasonable answer to your last point. I also believe they're not the only people who do support.

But you're right - anyone who picks MySQL or Postgres to power a super-resiliant mission-critical service is an idiot. And anyone who uses Oracle to power a non-resiliant low to medium load webservice is also usually an idiot.

Tools for the jobs people, tools for the jobs.