MySQL 3.23 Declared Stable 115
redcoat writes "After two long years, MySQL 3.23 has been declared stable. Improvements over 3.22 and .21 include rudimentary transaction support using the BerkeleyDB lib, full-on replication (master/slave configuration) and lots of other goodies. It's been a long wait, but a worthwhile one, no doubt."
Re:It's about time... (Score:2)
Sure things improves in MySQL, but huge missing features are ignored in favor of minor improvements here and there. I'm sorry but full-featured transaction, foreign keys, caching, constraints, nested queries, etc. are what people expect their database to do, and they are very MISSION CRITITAL in many situations. Reworking the table file format yet again is not what I'd call a massive improvement.
Re:Declared Stable? (Score:4)
Well, compared to what? It doesn't even have a can-opener!
Do yourself a favor and get yourselves a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife with builtin digital altimeter and thermometer [milnejewelry.com], so you can play with a real knife!
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
new features with bugs in them?
It's a whole company, but do you know how much people they are? Don't always think of giants like Mircosoft or Intel when thinking of companies, MySQL is developed by just a few people (I counted 12 or 13 coders), and they are keeping the whole stuff platform independent, the server and the tools run an Windows, and many flavours of unixes.
Ever built a transaction feature yourself? Or a rudimentary database? I don't think half an year is to long for the things they implemented in 3.23.
Michael
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
Re:Declared Stable? (Score:1)
With Transactions the code is to write first then check. If there are problems, you can always rollback.
With MySQL (other than with transactions on BDB), the update is atomic. It either succeeds or fails. It's a different paradigm and in many cases a better paradigm. You do need to do better analysis and coding, though.
Re:postgres / mysql (Score:3)
by a fellow who has worked on some
major open source oriented sites.
He does a quick comparison of
postgres and mysql here [phpbuilder.com].
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
Alex
Does this include the windows version too? (Score:1)
Re:NULL in indexed columns (Score:1)
Are you saying this is a good thing or a bad thing? Certainly at least for non-unique indexes you want to be able to have an index on the rows that do have data. Queries which use the index should should still be speedy.
For unique indexes it's another matter. Oracle allows unique indexes on nullable columns which is pretty bogus since it doesn't ensure uniqueness.
-Bruce
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:2)
Re:Congratulations to the team (Score:1)
Maybe you don't need all the database and transactional features for your application, but you aren't comparing like for like here.
Re:Shameless Plug: Easy MySQL Installation Product (Score:2)
I ran tests for a client using both Nusphere & AbriaSQL distributions of php, mysql,apache & perl (nupshere only) on Red hat & win 2k. The Nupshere was easyer to install on both platforms.
Also unless you pay for support, AbriaSQL use elder versions of all the programs. whixh is bad.
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
It will be GPLed soon.
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
That might be an issue if performance were a problem. Most web sites built on MySQL get results plenty fast without having to cache things.
I don't think anybody is suggesting using MySQL to run your Fortune 500 company database. MySQL's niche is web sites. The web is inherently session-based. If you've got somebody entering data in a form, and they bail halfway through, you have no way to tell. How many web sites allow you to "unsubmit" a transaction? So transaction rollback isn't a big deal for a lot of applications. Likewise with foreign keys. If you're coding your site in such a way that foreign key violations are what tip you off to a data integrity problem, you need to do some more work.
MySQL is not Oracle. It's not PostgreSQL either. In many ways, that's a good thing. That's the great thing about competition: You can pick the tool that does what you need.
Re:Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:1)
1 & 2: PG 7.1 (now in beta3) allows infinite length tuples, so you might want to reconsider that restriction, given that you're still in development and that PG 7.1 will be released in a very short time.
3: "order by" has to sort the output rows regardless, so sorting the indices alone doesn't help as much as you might think. This is particularly true if you're doing a "join" first. And merge joins result in an ordered set of output tuples which in some cases, at least, will match the "order by" sort requirements, meaning it can be left out altogether
4: PG 7.1 does
5: True
6: Not quite sure what you want, here, but PG does support a fast "COPY" command to import data quickly.
7: True
8: PG 7.1 does
9: True
10: Sourceforge recently migrated from MySQL to PG 7.1
Nobody holds a candle to Oracle yet. (Score:5)
Worse, I see Oracle as pulling away. In the last two years, the open source databases have struggled to add features that I view as expected and required while Oracle has added 10X more. Transactions & row-level locking, nested selects, foreign keys, etc... are not optional features. In order to compete, open source needs database projects with forces comparable to the linux kernel, apache, gnome, and KDE projects. I just don't think Larry Ellison is out there worrying about GPL'd competition.
I don't think Oracle gets the proper attention in the open source community. Oracle has a greater "lock in" effect and has mostly got a free ride from the open source community so far. Oracle is a big gorilla that is rapidly becoming the most secure proprietary software vendor around.
Re:Raves. (Score:2)
GRANT FILE ON *.* TO replicate@ip_address IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
Although, you are correct, as this is a potential problem to be aware of, as listed in the MySQL documentation:
"Don't give the file privilege to all users. Any user that has this privilege can write a file anywhere in the file system with the privileges of the mysqld daemon! To make this a bit safer, all files generated with SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE are readable to everyone, and you can't overwrite existing files. The file privilege may also be used to read any file accessible to the Unix user that the server runs as. This could be abused, for example, by using LOAD DATA to load `/etc/passwd' into a table, which can then be read with SELECT."
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
On the developer's mailing list of Akopia's Interchange open source e-commerce package, http://developer.akopia.com/archive/interchange- users/2001/msg00535.html , Monty Widenius said himself last week the following:
Our development has during the last year grown from 2 1/2 to 8 people and we have also got a much bigger market penetration during this time.
Re:Something neat (Score:1)
Any ideas on how efficient it is for large tables? Does it have to internally randomly order the whole table before returning just one row?
Re:Nobody holds a candle to Oracle yet. (Score:1)
I use Oracle in my day job. It definitely has some good features, and a good few mis-features as well.
While you are probably correct that there aren't any open source alternatives at the high end, at the mid-range PostgreSQL is definitely an alternative, with (better than) row level locking, transactions, foreign keys and nested selects all there in current production versions.
Re:Nobody holds a candle to Oracle yet. (Score:1)
mysql is not out the crush the oracle competition! mysql and oracle are too different applications designed for different solutions. wanna make the next ebay? use oracle. wanna make a lightning fast accounting app for a small to medium sized business? use mysql.
please don't compare the two in this regard.
golgotha
Re:Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:1)
3. AFAIK, if you are sorting a table, which is very common in web pages, indexes reduces a lot the complexity of the sort. According to the PG docs, it's even makes use of temporary files for sorting data in case the output it's too big for doing it in memory.
6. It means that the file is available in the client or server side. It's important if you want to "download" a file from the client or import the contents from a server side file. It affects access privileges as well.
Regarding the remaining issues... you are right too.
--ricardo
Re:Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:1)
Michael Widenius gave himself some responses, which might be interesting for those following this discussion.
Search http://developer.akopia.com/archive/interchange-us ers for "monty@mysql.com" or read the thread:"[ic] postgres versus mysql"
Please don't post comments to that list if they are not related to "Interchange". Thanks.
Re:3.23, Replication is powerful (Score:1)
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:4)
Now say you allow orders to be passed with or WITHOUT an account (don't want to force people on creating an account first).
you have in your orders table a "customer_account" field, can be NULL or can a foreign key to the customer table.
Now you can do this in MySQL :
SELECT * FROM orders LEFT JOIN customers ON orders.custumer_account=customers.account_name WHERE (blablabla)
And then you have in your results either only orders info (if custumer_account is NULL) or orders AND customers info at the same time. No need for two separated requests...
So LEFT JOINS are quite usefull in any table that has a foreign key that can be NULL.
Re:Something neat (Score:1)
3.23, Replication is powerful (Score:3)
It's about time... (Score:2)
Well, they have been working on the 3.23 for about half a year and all they managed to do is implement a basic transaction feature. And they didn't even did it really by themselves, they had to take some code from the Berkeley DB and use a different table file format.
I guess by 2017 we can expect to have nested queries, 2045 for row-level-locking and 2078 for true foreign keys... at least Postgresql, with all the its flaws, is improving at a much faster pace and we can expect a whole lot of migration from MySQL to Postgresql sometimes in 2001/2002.
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:3)
Now, would that be Interbase with [slashdot.org] or without a compiled in superuser backdoor account?
Of course, for pure SELECT power, nothing beats MySQL. So if you're not inserting data too often, and you don't mind running ISAMCHK every now and then, and data integrity isn't entirely critical (which does work for a surprising number of people), then yay MySQL!
I use it.
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Don't you just love the way MySQL gives reasons not to use SQL features they don't support [mysql.com]? And not just foreign keys, either, but transactions [mysql.com] as well, among other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's now rudimentary transaction support via BDB. Not that I'd trust any important data to something that is considered "rudimentary".
Then again, some people just have to reinvent the wheel several times over. One could wish that MySQL would just go away, in favor of more mature products [postgresql.org] that are also "Free". It won't happen anytime soon, but we can dream.
NULL in indexed columns (Score:1)
Re:Congratulations to the team (Score:1)
That said, you could just as easily use Sybase ASE on linux, which is effectively free, and is a proper RDBMS.
MySQL .21 reportedly has a buffer overflow (Score:2)
If you have local users, it's in your best interests to upgrade, since
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
Query caching is simply a matter of keeping SELECT results somewhere and ditching them when an UPDATE/ROLLBACK comes in. I guess MySQL team is more interested in fixing some obscure bug with DB replication than speeding up their database by several order of magnitude...
As for nested SELECT, why don't we have them yet ? Is it so hard to run QUERY #1, then feed the result into QUERY #2 ? Heck, we all do it ourselves on the client side of MySQL with a loop in PHP/PERL and it takes 5 lines of code... shouldn't take that much to implement in MySQL itself !
Postgresql doens't have 13 full time coders working on it, yet it has much more functionnalities, and according to the latest benchmarks around, has gotten faster than MySQL.
Where is postgresql for solaris?? (Score:1)
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:2)
I have run it on Linux and NT for the past 6 months. I built a real estate lease entry and tracking system using Interbase, PHP, and Apache. It does support full transactions. It does support full FKs. I don't know how it compares to PostgreSQL, but PG was not an option as the client only has NT for the server.
Re:NULL in indexed columns (Score:1)
But null means "no data" it is not some special data value.
If you don't want nulls, say "not null" in the column definition, but it has been a source of greif to me that I couldn't index on a field just because I didn't have a value in every case.
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
are you referring to the except clause in select? it uses a subquery, but i think it's still considered one query.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
Tell Red Hat! (Score:1)
---------
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:2)
I think you can make the argument that Interbase lost 'the battle' because they have a lousy marketing department. Until Interbase went Open Source (tm), I had never heard of it even though I have been building Oracle and Sybase applications for the past 5 years.
Sounds more like a marketing problem than a functionality problem.Interbase has cool features [borland.com] that other 'commercial' RDBMS do not have (like events).
Re:Where is postgresql for solaris?? (Score:1)
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
Re:Something neat (Score:1)
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:3)
Find enclosed some of the conclusions:
--ricardo
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
Re:NULL in indexed columns (Score:1)
... and still this bug isn't fixed (Score:1)
So, I am suck running MySQL as root becuase that get it taken care or ... ARGGGGGGGG!
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Replication, Transactions, etc. (Score:1)
Which databases support replication and transactions?
Mysitfied as to it's apeal (Score:1)
--
Re:3.23, Replication is powerful (Score:2)
They say it is targeted to be available in spring 2001. It sounds like they are implementing yet another storage architecture. They say it will have transactions also. So if you want transactions you will have two table types to choose from Gemini (NuSpheres new one) and bdb that is new with 3.23. So we are seeing open source competition between different modules within an open source project. And it seems each new one is better than the last.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Nobody holds a candle to Oracle yet. (Score:1)
Re:Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:1)
Postgres supports tables which exceed the operating system file size limit. Many of us can't afford processors with more then 2 or 4 GB of RAM. I don't think the fact that Postgres will let me sort files that don't fit in memory is a weakness
Of course in the web environment sort results are likely to be relatively small, in which case they'll fit in RAM just fine assuming you've set the postgres per-sort limit to a reasonably large value.
Again, in some cases being able to sort directly on indices does make a difference, in other cases it doesn't.
1&2. The BLOB interface is a bit clumsy, true. However as of PG 7.1 pg_dump will make consistent snapshots of databases containing BLOBS, which can then be restored. I don't really see the fact that you need to use the interface in a transaction as a bad thing, though people who are used to not using transactions (most MySQL users) might think it is. After all, if your BLOB insert dies you generally will want to roll back any related inserts
The clunkiness of the BLOB interface isn't a big deal for most websites. Even if you're dealing in images, word files, etc the fact of the matter is that in a well-designed system the low-level details will be abstracted into a small set of routines. It does work
6. The BLOB interface lets you import files directly, for instance those files that a client "downloads" from the web which are stuffed into a temp file by your webserver
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
Excuse me to tell it this way : this is a very short sighted answer. Web sites tend to grow, and sometimes they grow big enough that the DB server start crawling to its knees under the load. You can never have to much optimized software. Slashdot needs a 4 CPU system to run MySQL... maybe with queries caching it could do the same job with just one CPU and an extra gig or RAM (forums are a lot of read and just a little of write). That's a lof of money saving !!!
Secondly, so request can still be pretty slow on MySQL. I use it to generate charts from 1000's or record... even with indexes and lots of work on the queries it's somewhat silly to run again and again the same queries when they could be cached.
MySQL's niche is web sites. The web is inherently session-based.
So ? Because it's the web means you don't need rollbacks ? What if, behind the web site, you have e-commerce, statistics manipulations, etc ? What if your user have points they can trade ? Wouldn't that require at least sessions ? What if I'd rather use nested SELECT than code some ugly loops in PHP to do it with several queries ?
Because MySQL is targeted to the Web doesn't mean it is ok to have no professionnal features. people do important things now on the Web (except porn, but then even porn can be good money
Re:Ahem: (Score:1)
I think the MySQL syntax even allows for the keyword "FOREIGN KEY" in table definitions (and they even plan to sometimes save this information somewhere, maybe there's hope !).
Congratulations to the team (Score:3)
I'm of the opinion that along with several other open source applications, MySQL is what's helping Linux make large inroads to the enterprise market.
A while back I priced a WinNT solution for a basic e-commerce site, with MS-SQL 7, ASP, and all the rest of the NT fluff needed. It came to over $5,000 Australian dollars (about $7.33 USD
MySQL was a large part of the equation. I was and still am very impressed with it.
Again, well done to the team.
GPLed (Score:2)
Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:5)
Lack of full foreign key support (and maybe transactions) is the only reason I don't consider mySQL a proper relational database management system as it claims [mysql.com] sinceit doesn't enforce relationships via referential integrity checks [mysql.com]. In many large complex applications, having referential checks built into the DB is very useful and it would be a great boon if mySQL had this functionality.
Grabel's Law
MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Shameless Plug: Easy MySQL Installation Product (Score:2)
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
They both suck in a lot of areas.... don't bash one without bashing the other.
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
for many users. Yes, it will be lifted soon.
So I heard. Let us talk when. Meanwhile MYSQL
is here and does the job.
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:3)
That's the biggest disadvantage of PG I've found, and it's not *that* big a deal.
Joke? (Score:2)
Someone fill me in. I don't get the joke.
Or is it just a really bad typo?
-
-Be a man. Insult me without using an AC.
Re:Declared Stable? (Score:1)
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
Re:It's about time... (Score:4)
I'm just disappointed they didn't bump up the version number further to let people know how substantial the release really is.
--JRZ
Re:3.23, Replication is powerful (Score:1)
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
Re:I hope that they didn't sacrifice speed... (Score:1)
Postgres is trying for speed and MySQL for correctness.
==
What are you talking about? I read your post five times and still can't figure out exactly what you are saying. With an opening statement of "Postgres is a mostly complete DB, with some things that need work. MySQL is a fast hack with little overhead.", one is left scratching one's head from the start. What makes Postgres "more complete" than mysql? How does one determine how much "overhead" mysql has? It looks like you might be trying to imply that postgres's SQL implementation is more complete than MySQL's but the statement is too vague to know for certain. Finishing up with "Postgres is trying for speed and MySQL for correctness", the post closes with the reader trying to figure out what "correctness" would mean as it would supposedly apply to an RBDMS. Could you be any more vague in your assessment and comparison of the two systems? All this in a +5 post... argh!
badtz-maru
Re:Joke? (Score:3)
Someone fill me in. I don't get the joke.
Or is it just a really bad typo?
No, no...it's just a minor problem with MySQL data integrity. It seems to happen a lot here on Salshdot...
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
MySQL have for many years been been considered as a very unstable product and that it have been (still are probably) lacking a lot of really useful features.
==
I have never heard of any complaint of stability with mysql whereas postgres versions prior to 7 were well known for eating databases. As for useful features, how about the blob support in postgres? Oh yeah, it's nonexistent. I can argue this factually because I prefer postgres but let's not turn a blind eye to its shortcomings. As for interbase, with the backdoor discovery being so recent, it would be hard to consider that platform seriously until a complete security audit was performed on the code.
badtz-maru
Exactly! (Score:2)
Re:It's about time... (Score:1)
I would *never* consider running anything that needs 100% data safety on MySQL.... There are other open-source alternatives, or for those with open minds (and pocketbooks), closed-source databases. Each of which have much better features and support.
-
The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]
Good upgrade (Score:3)
The people who are reporting MySQL crashes should submit bug reports. The MySQL people claim they haven't lost data in years, and if that's not true, it needs to be publicized.
Raves. (Score:3)
The replication feature has been changed a little since the tutorial was written, so you may want to check out the documentation at the MySQL site [mysql.com]. Here's a copy of my own /etc/my.cnf file from both machines, which are setup for 2-way replication, for reference (perhaps I'll get around to posting a tutorial of my own later today on The Linux Pimp [thelinuxpimp.com]
Main server /etc/my.cnf file
[mysqld]
log-bin
master-host=ip_address_of_backup
master-user=replicate
master-password=your_password
server-id=1
Backup server /etc/my.cnf file
[mysqld]
log-bin
master-host=ip_address_of_main_server
master-user=replicate
master-password=your_password
server-id=2
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:4)
The LEFT JOIN is something I wish they (Postgres) would put in, but then, Oracle don't support it either...
The reasons I prefer Postgres are, to name a few:
Transactions
Sub SELECT's
Using CASE WHEN
Postgres used (pre 6.5.3 i think) to have some memory leaks when using transactions, but this seems to have been fixed in later versions.
Re:Nobody holds a candle to Oracle yet. (Score:1)
Re:Ten reasons to migrate from Postgres to MySQL (Score:1)
1&2. We had problems with LO+transation in PHP4 and PG7.0. The LO remained unaccesible for several minutes and the calling PHP program stayed deadlocked.
6. When downloading files from the webserver, almost everything is done by PHP, which stores the file in a server disk. What I meant is that when importing from a client (front end) program that can run in the same machine as the backend or in another... PG doesn't allow it.
--ricardo
Re:Joke? (Score:1)
ObSubheadlineTroll: Taco's ass just declared a continent!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:Raves. (Score:1)
so passwords are stored in plain text on potentially publicly readable config files.
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
You can go download a multiplatform, stable, easy to manage and maintain database that has been in production forever and is rock solid and has great documentation.
Re:MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:1)
Re:Congratulations to the team (Score:1)
Re:Whither Foreign Key Support? (Score:1)
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:1)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Pronounciation (Score:1)
mysql> select soundex("mysql");
mysql> select soundex("mysequel");
You see, even the MySQL developers think it's pronounced "sequel"!
Real deal. (Score:2)
mysql-data-dir/my.cnf is used to set server-specific options (RedHat defaults to
~/.my.cnf to set user-specific options.
My original post suggestion of /etc/my.cnf works fine, but it opens you up to the potential security issues discussed above, as isil [slashdot.org] so wisely suggested. I believe the proper thing to do is to put your my.cnf file in /var/lib/mysql. Thanks for the correction.
Re:MySQL, bah! (Score:2)
I hope that they didn't sacrifice speed... (Score:5)
If you have a little web site (or even a big one) where integrity is not key and ease of setup is important, MySQL serves that niche. If the improvments don't sacrifice their advantages, go MySQL. However, if they move towards completeness at the expense of speed... well, how silly. We already have Postgres...
Postgres is trying for speed and MySQL for correctness. Yeah... we get two similar systems. I would rather they focus on their advantages so we maintain two useful system.
As a lover of DB theory, I hate MySQL. As a lover of low barriers to entry, I love it. I'd hate to see MySQL lose it's niche by becoming too general.
Alex
Re:I hope that they didn't sacrifice speed... (Score:3)
Performance is critical in _any_ database, and you can't add features at the expense of performance and expect to keep your customers happy. You can add slowish implementations of new features, but you better not downgrade existing performance.
PostgreSQL 7.1 is now in beta and should be out by the end of February (maybe earlier). With support for column sizes up to 2GB(!), as well as many other refinements, I certainly don't think that they are sacrificing feature efforts to performance enhancement.
That's not to say I find it slow either. My most recent web development (replacing a prior ASP/MSSQL/IIS installation :-) at http://newsroom.co.nz/
[newsroom.co.nz] manages to do around 30-odd queries for the front page and still pops it out in just under 0.1 of a second on a Duron 700 based system.
I looked at MySQL (and I help out a client who uses it on occasion), but the potential performance improvement isn't worth it to me to lose all those neat features.
Re:3.23, Replication is powerful (Score:3)
I really wish they would have just called this a RO load balancing option, since when you invoke the word replication it means a lot more.
Re:I hope that they didn't sacrifice speed... (Score:2)
The glib statement is that among speed, integrity, availability and affordability, you can pick three. InterBase [borland.com] kind of spoils the equation, but when you compare MySQL, PostgreSQL, and, say, Oracle, you get the idea.
Disclaimer I had Chinese food for lunch.
--
Re:I hope that they didn't sacrifice speed... (Score:2)
SQL is a language for interfacing with RDBMS, not a reason for existance.
I've worked with both. I like that MySQL is fast with little effort. Connection pooling can mitigate the speed issues, but there is more work in that.
Again MySQL is good for a user with little RDBMS needs that needs a quick way to access data. Postgres is close to being a "real" database.
Alex
Re:Something neat (Score:2)
SELECT something, (RAND()*10) as random FROM table ORDER by random LIMIT 1
the *10 is necessary or MySQL would optimize the request and compute RAND() one time for all rows...
MySQL is not alone in the OpenSource World. (Score:4)
MySQL have for many years been been considered as a very unstable product and that it have been (still are probably) lacking a lot of really useful features.
In the open source world, I find two RDBMS especially good. PostgreSQL [postgresql.org] and Interbase [interbase.com]. They are both fine products and probably near commercial grade RDBMS standard.
So even if MySQL is now considered stable. So what? We have other choices, which have been developed with great care for many years and have been added features from their stability, not the opposite.
So in my humble opinion, if you want to run anything (semi)serious, definately do not run MySQL, there are MUCH better options out there.