1.5 MySQL Development Roadmap

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This section provides a snapshot of the MySQL development roadmap, including major features implemented or planned for MySQL 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, and 5.1. The following sections provide information for each release series.

The production release series is MySQL 4.0, which was declared stable for production use as of Version 4.0.12, released in March 2003. This means that future 4.0 development will be limited only to making bug fixes. For the older MySQL 3.23 series, only critical bug fixes will be made.

Active MySQL development currently is taking place in the MySQL 4.1 and 5.0 release series. This means that new features are being added to MySQL 4.1 and MySQL 5.0. 4.1 is available in beta status, and 5.0 is available in alpha status.

Plans for some of the most requested features are summarized in the following table.

Feature

MySQL Series

Unions

4.0

Subqueries

4.1

R-trees

4.1 (for MyISAM tables)

Stored procedures

5.0

Views

5.0

Cursors

5.0

Foreign keys

5.1 (already implemented in 3.23 for InnoDB )

Triggers

5.1

Full outer join

5.1

Constraints

5.1


1.5.1 MySQL 4.0 in a Nutshell

Long awaited by our users, MySQL Server 4.0 is now available in production status.

MySQL 4.0 is available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/ and from our mirrors. MySQL 4.0 has been tested by a large number of users and is in production use at many large sites.

The major new features of MySQL Server 4.0 are geared toward our existing business and community users, enhancing the MySQL database software as the solution for mission-critical, heavy-load database systems. Other new features target the users of embedded databases.

1.5.1.1 Features Available in MySQL 4.0
  • Speed enhancements

    • MySQL 4.0 has a query cache that can give a huge speed boost to applications with repetitive queries.

    • Version 4.0 further increases the speed of MySQL Server in a number of areas, such as bulk INSERT statements, searching on packed indexes, full-text searching (using FULLTEXT indexes), and COUNT(DISTINCT) .

  • Embedded MySQL Server introduced

    • The new Embedded Server library can easily be used to create standalone and embedded applications. The embedded server provides an alternative to using MySQL in a client/server environment.

  • InnoDB storage engine as standard

    • The InnoDB storage engine is now offered as a standard feature of the MySQL server. This means full support for ACID transactions, foreign keys with cascading UPDATE and DELETE , and row-level locking are now standard features.

  • New functionality

    • The enhanced FULLTEXT search properties of MySQL Server 4.0 enables FULLTEXT indexing of large text masses with both binary and natural-language searching logic. You can customize minimal word length and define your own stop word lists in any human language, enabling a new set of applications to be built with MySQL Server.

  • Standards compliance, portability, and migration

    • Many users will also be happy to learn that MySQL Server now supports the UNION statement, a long-awaited standard SQL feature.

    • MySQL now runs natively on the Novell NetWare platform beginning with NetWare 6.0.

    • Features to simplify migration from other database systems to MySQL Server include TRUNCATE TABLE (as in Oracle).

  • Internationalization

    • Our German, Austrian, and Swiss users will note that MySQL 4.0 now supports a new character set, latin1_de , which ensures that the German sorting order sorts words with umlauts in the same order as do German telephone books.

  • Usability enhancements

    In the process of implementing features for new users, we have not forgotten requests from our loyal community of existing users.

    • Most mysqld parameters (startup options) can now be set without taking down the server. This is a convenient feature for database administrators (DBAs).

    • Multiple-table DELETE and UPDATE statements have been added.

    • On Windows, symbolic link handling at the database level is enabled by default. On Unix, the MyISAM storage engine now supports symbolic linking at the table level (and not just the database level as before).

    • SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS and FOUND_ROWS() are new functions that make it possible to find out the number of rows a SELECT query that includes a LIMIT clause would have returned without that clause.

The news section of the online manual includes a more in-depth list of features. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/News.html.

1.5.1.2 The Embedded MySQL Server

The libmysqld embedded server library makes MySQL Server suitable for a vastly expanded realm of applications. By using this library, developers can embed MySQL Server into various applications and electronics devices, where the end user has no knowledge of there actually being an underlying database. Embedded MySQL Server is ideal for use behind the scenes in Internet appliances, public kiosks , turnkey hardware/software combination units, high performance Internet servers, self-contained databases distributed on CD-ROM, and so on.

Many users of libmysqld will benefit from the MySQL Dual Licensing. For those not wishing to be bound by the GPL, the software is also made available under a commercial license. The embedded MySQL library uses the same interface as the normal client library, so it is convenient and easy to use.

1.5.2 MySQL 4.1 in a Nutshell

MySQL Server 4.0 laid the foundation for new features implemented in MySQL 4.1, such as subqueries and Unicode support, and for the work on stored procedures being done in version 5.0. These features come at the top of the wish list of many of our customers.

With these additions, critics of the MySQL Database Server have to be more imaginative than ever in pointing out deficiencies in the MySQL database management system. Already well-known for its stability, speed, and ease of use, MySQL Server is able to fulfill the requirement checklists of very demanding buyers .

1.5.2.1 Features Available in MySQL 4.1

The MySQL 4.1 features listed in this section already are implemented. A few other MySQL 4.1 features are still planned. See Section 1.6.1, "New Features Planned for 4.1."

The set of features being added to version 4.1 is mostly fixed. Most new features being coded are or will be available in MySQL 5.0. See Section 1.6.2, "New Features Planned for 5.0."

MySQL 4.1 is currently in the beta stage, and binaries are available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html. All binary releases pass our extensive test suite without any errors on the platforms on which we test.

For those wishing to use the most recent development source for MySQL 4.1, we make our 4.1 BitKeeper repository publicly available.

MySQL 4.1 is going through the steps of Alpha (during which time new features might still be added/changed), Beta (when we have feature freeze and only bug corrections will be done), and Gamma (indicating that a production release is just weeks ahead). At the end of this process, MySQL 4.1 will become the new production release.

  • Support for subqueries and derived tables

    • A "subquery" is a SELECT statement nested within another statement. A "derived table" (an unnamed view) is a subquery in the FROM clause of another statement.

  • Speed enhancements

    • Faster binary client/server protocol with support for prepared statements and parameter binding.

    • BTREE indexing is now supported for HEAP tables, significantly improving response time for non-exact searches.

  • New functionality

    • CREATE TABLE tbl_name2 LIKE tbl_name1 allows you to create, with a single statement, a new table with a structure exactly like that of an existing table.

    • The MyISAM storage engine now supports OpenGIS spatial types for storing geographical data.

    • Replication can be done over SSL connections.

  • Standards compliance, portability, and migration

    • The new client/server protocol adds the ability to pass multiple warnings to the client, rather than only a single result. This makes it much easier to track problems that occur in operations such as bulk data loading.

    • SHOW WARNINGS shows warnings for the last command.

  • Internationalization

    • To support applications that require the use of local languages, the MySQL software now offers extensive Unicode support through the utf8 and ucs2 character sets.

    • Character sets can now be defined per column, table, and database. This allows for a high degree of flexibility in application design, particularly for multi-language Web sites.

  • Usability enhancements

    • In response to popular demand, we have added a server-based HELP command that can be used to get help information for SQL statements. The advantage of having this information on the server side is that the information is always applicable to the particular server version that you actually are using. Because this information is available by issuing an SQL statement, any client can be written to access it. For example, the help command of the mysql command-line client has been modified to have this capability.

    • In the new client/server protocol, multiple statements can be issued with a single call.

    • The new client/server protocol also supports returning multiple result sets. This might occur as a result of sending multiple statements, for example.

    • A new INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE ... syntax has been implemented. This allows you to UPDATE an existing row if the INSERT would have caused a duplicate in a PRIMARY or UNIQUE index.

    • A new aggregate function, GROUP_CONCAT() , adds the extremely useful capability of concatenating column values from grouped rows into a single result string.

The news section of the online manual includes a more in-depth list of features. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/News.html.

1.5.3 MySQL 5.0: The Next Development Release

New development for MySQL is focused on the 5.0 release, featuring stored procedures and other new features. See Section 1.6.2, "New Features Planned for 5.0."

For those wishing to take a look at the bleeding edge of MySQL development, we make our BitKeeper repository for MySQL version 5.0 publicly available. As of December 2003, binary builds of version 5.0 are also available.

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MySQL AB MySQL Administrator[ap]s Guide
MySQL AB MySQL Administrator[ap]s Guide
ISBN: 782142591
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 138

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