Oracle Releases MySQL 5.5

darthcamaro writes "Two years after Sun released MySQL 5.1, Oracle has picked up the ball with the official release of MySQL 5.5. New features include semi-synchronous replication, InnoDB by default and new SIGNAL/RESIGNAL support for exception handling. Above all, Oracle stressed that they are committed to further MySQL open source development and that they see it as a complementary technology to their proprietary Oracle database."

Comments

You have nothing to fear.

[tautog]

You can trust us. Honest.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[erroneus]

I am simply not so optimistic. I am extremely wary of what Oracle will do. Sun was a positive. Oracle is a negative. I think by now, they are feeling the backlash of their previous missteps but that does not mean they have learned their lesson. If there's one thing I know about this type of business and that type of businessman is that once they set their mind on something, they are going to do it whether or not it is in their best interests. What they will do is back off, slow down or approach the end result from another direction. In the end, it will be the same.

OpenOffice.org will become something we don't want. MySQL will be used as a tool until it manages to kill the competition and it will get dropped. Java is already getting screwed up and over. VirtualBox? I'm afraid to even think about it... I love VirtualBox. I used to pirate VMWare Workstation, but I simply like VB better. I don't want to switch back.

I don't like Oracle. I never did. It will take some REALLY surprising things for Oracle to change my mind about them and I seriously doubt they are interested in what I think of them.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[davecb]

MySQL is a way to take market share away from MS Sql, and Access. It will be valuable to Oracle until MS dies.

--dave

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[tepples]

Postgres.

Any other questions you have?

Here's one: how to adapt LAMP applications that depend on behaviors of MySQL.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[tepples]

MySQL is a way to take market share away from MS Sql, and Access.

Microsoft Access is more than just Jet or MSDE; it is also a scriptable GUI framework for accessing databases. What is the direct counterpart of Access that uses MySQL?

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't think Oracle views Postgres as threat in any definition of the term, they could hamper OS db field very easily, actually:

1. Over two or three years, Oracle can merge mysql into their Express edition. That'll basically require adding a mysql API onto it. They can probably do that over a few weeks, but why hurry?

When most users can download a compatible binary from Oracle, who'll care about the genuine "mysql", really? Especially given that mysql technologies are controlled by the same Oracle.

2. Over the same period, they can gradually kill the mysql trademark in favor of OracleSomething. Puff, mysql is gone.

3. You'll end up with a product that is mysql compatible, has Oracle features, and is usable "for free". By virtue of being an Oracle, it will compete well against Pg as well. Unlike Pg, it will also provide smooth migration path towards the slaughterhouse with all bells and whistles.

That may move some less ideological Pg users away, hurting Pg's acceptance and development long term.

So, the db landscape is left without mysql, and weakened Pg.

Not a compleat "kill", but close.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[should_be_linear]

Only counterpart to Access I can think of would be if Fisher-Price and BP created DB engine together.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[jimicus]

What is the direct counterpart of Access that uses MySQL?

You've had a number of replies so far. AFAICT, most have missed the point so thoroughly that they can't possibly have seen Access used in a business. So I'm going to explain Access.

Yes, Access gives you a database engine (and not a particularly good one at that). The other thing it gives you is a GUI-driven desktop application which makes it an absolute doddle to design tables, queries, forms and reports without having to write a single line of code.

The end result is frequently badly designed, with little or no attention paid to normalisation or data integrity, but it broadly works.

Now, you might very well turn around and say "Tough. You'll just have to get used to writing code." - you're talking to the wrong people. The people who are using Access in businesses are the middle managers who have never in their life written code and aren't about to start now. So many businesses pushed Access to the desktop years ago when they bought Office, and have since discovered that the reason the IT department hasn't heard from lots of parts of the business is because some manager decided that rather than to-and-fro with the IT department (which would cost a lot of money out of his budget - larger businesses just love shuffling money between departments), he'd cobble together a little application in Access to run his department. It's invariably a mess, but it's a mess that's so ingrained it isn't going anywhere.

Anyhow, these guys have no idea what SQL is and are only vaguely aware that a database stores everything in tables. You can no more ask them to do everything in PHP from now on than you can ask them to lick their own testicles.

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[BigDogCH]

This is exactly correct! It seems like every 3rd department has some access database that they use.....IT doesn't find out about it until someone broke it or deleted it. In the end, we ends up supporting it. Here is how it works.

1. A single user creats a simple access database for their own use.
2. That user shares this with their most trusted sidekick.
3. The sidekick takes over when the original user dies from intestinal parasites.
4. The entire department now uses this tool, and is fully reliant on it.
5. Requests now come into IT from other departments asking for access to the tool.
6. IT says "oh man, this sucks".

Re:You have nothing to fear.

[raddan]

Actually, as someone who has spent the better part of the last decade writing database applications (mostly on MySQL and Postgres), I've come around to Access. Why, you might ask? Because it allows my more technical end-users to collaborate, and it allows you to build functional mockups extremely quickly.

Anyone with experience building enterprise applications can tell you that the hard part is NOT the writing of the code. Most database-driven applications work similarly. The hard part is gathering requirements from non-technical people. What you'll find in any sizeable business is that the knowledge of the business process is distributed among many people. You have to become the expert. I like to model the activity on paper, and then interview people to walk through their jobs with them. The hardest part is trying to decide what parts of the business process are wasteful traditions, and which parts are essential. You may find many subtleties in people's work, the importance of which is not discovered until much later. Good notes are essential.

Anyway, back to Access-- with Access, I can literally have someone sit next to me as I mockup a WORKING demo. When they see it working the way they want, and they walk out, I can rip it apart and do things the right way. On a recent project, I did this, and it finally got the software off the ground. The problem was that the requirements were changing too fast. The original developer had written something in PHP, but every time he was asked to change something, the result was weeks of agonizing bugfixes. We switched the frontend to Access, keeping the data in MySQL (we used the MySQL ODBC connector). Now that the software has matured, and the pace of changes has slowed, developers can replace Access with something like Rails. Access is a great tool if you want to rapidly beta-test your application. I've tried other rapid development frameworks (Rails, CakePHP, and .NET stuff), and they simply aren't as fast, although in the end, you should plan to switch to one of them.

Microsoft put a lot of thought into the GUI design features of Access. I have yet to find something that works as well, or as quickly. You're right, it's not a "real" database, but it can be *attached* to a real database. Microsoft gets a lot of crap (rightly) for their software that sucks, but Access is not in that category.

From the article....

[Pharmboy]

From the article: There were concerns about how the open source database would fare under Oracle's leadership, but those concerns are now being put to rest by Oracle with the release of MySQL 5.5

Um, no, not all concerns are put to rest. This was a pretty fluffy piece of journalism, just quotes and feel good words. I'm glad that MySQL has moved up a notch, but I'm still looking really hard at PostgreSQL as a possibility in the long run.

Re:From the article....

[nxtw]

When's the last time you lost data with mysql that was directly attributable to the database, and not to a messed-up query or a hardware or network problem?

On 0000-00-00 00:00:00, of course.

Re:From the article....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I've written multithreaded servers that have run for months without leaking as well. That's got fuck-all to do with data integrity as a general concept, but I was hoping we could jerk each other off for a little while since you seem to be in a self-congratulatory mood.

Re:From the article....

[Sxooter]

No, the ANSI SQL way to do this is to use MERGE. Unfortunately, pgsql doesn't support that yet. It's on the todo list so I'm sure if someone got out their checkbook and wrote the pg developers a check we'd see it soon enough.

Yeah right.

[Arancaytar]

Oracle is absolutely and steadfastly committed to Open Source, as seen from their admirable interaction with the OpenOffice.org and Java communities.

Why not Firebird?

[spynode]

Nobody seems to mention Firebird which is supposedly on hell of a RDBMS. I wonder why it is so unpopular while it offers so much.

Re:Why not Firebird?

[Bacon Bits]

Pretty easy really.

1) It was originally an embedded or server-less DBMS. That instantly makes devs think "Oh Lord, it's Access!"
2) It had a large number of security problems at one point (pre v2 era) in the past that went un-addressed for entirely too long.
3) It uses Interbase Public License (a modified Mozilla Public License) that is not compatible with the GPL... that's really, really bad for an Open Source embedded-style DB.

It's gotten leaps and bounds better since early versions, but it's never really beaten the early reputation, IMO.

Re:The thing is, Oracle still owns it.

[gman003]

MySQL is still just as good as it was under Sun. If you don't like whatever changes Oracle makes, fork it. Make your own. Call it LibreSQL if you wish. Until I hear of Oracle actually doing something bad to MySQL, I'm going to keep using it.

Re:The thing is, Oracle still owns it.

[h4rr4r]

I would suggest planning ahead, based on their track record it sure seems like you might one day need to go some place else.

Windows kernel-mode code signing

[tepples]

VirtualBox? I'm afraid to even think about it... I love VirtualBox.

At ever step of the way it still be open source. If you don't like what they're doing and want to change it, make a fork.

Some virtualization features, such as USB forwarding, require kernel-mode device drivers. On 64-bit Windows Vista and 64-bit Windows 7 operating systems, all kernel-mode device drivers must be digitally signed with a timestamp from a commmercial certificate authority recognized by Microsoft. If you add your own self-signed CA, you get the always-on-top notice "Test Mode" in all four corners of the screen. Unless you are forking on behalf of an established organization that already has a kernel-mode code signing certificate, the advantage of the official version over your fork is that the end user doesn't have to throw his computer into "Test Mode". The only way out that I can see is to run GNU/Linux on the bare hardware, and that brings hardware compatibility issues that I don't feel like bringing up yet again.