MySQL Readies Release Candidate For 5.1 168
Anonymous Dolphin writes "MySQL has released plans for a final RC for the MySQL 5.1 server. Monty Widenius, the CTO and founder of MySQL, has put up a request for more feedback from the community. You can get the latest RC here. Please help with the testing of 5.1 and report your bugs here."
Sigh. Forgot Link. (Score:5, Informative)
MySQL XML Functions [mysql.com].
Re:nice feature set (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hosting providers (Score:2, Informative)
1and1 allow you to choose both 4 and 5. You choose the version when creating a database on their management page. I don't know about other webhosts, though.
Re:Do people trust this project anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
PostgreSQL is a fine Database as well. MySql just seems to be used more in web environments.
Re:So will Postgres ever catch MySQL? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm unfamiliar with MySQL's partitioning -- is it radically different from postgresql's partitioning [postgresql.org]?
I'm using inheritance to implement table partitioning with a rather large (50+ gig) PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Constraint exclusion [postgresql.org] allows the query planner to use CHECK constraints to avoid even looking at tables where conditions contradict the constraints.
Re:Hosting providers (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't really true of an upgrade from Mysql 4.x -> 5.x. MySQL changed some things (notably their JOIN syntax) to make them more compliant with the ANSI standards. So assuming you're dealing w/ PHP/MySQL programmers that only knew the MySQL way to do joins, their applications may break on upgrade.
For more information, see the section entitled "Join Processing Changes" here:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/join.html [mysql.com]
Re:Yeah, but does it have sub second Timestamps? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to switch databases over the issue, you might as well consider other options, like Firebird: it's also free, I do believe the timestamps have better-than-second precision (at the very least it insists on showing me 4 extra digits I never use for anything), and it's certainly easier to install, setup, and admin than PostgreSQL (IMO). It has limitations, of course, and you should be careful to read the fine print, as you would with any product selection. I would worry that you're using some particularly esoteric features of PostgreSQL that won't translate well to Firebird, but if MySQL is even an option for you, that's highly unlikely.
Slashdot declined to carry the story I posted on it (yeah, yeah, grousing...), but Firebird 2.1 (release) came out three months ago, with some really nifty features like on-commit triggers that let you enforce constraints no other database will help you enforce (that I've seen -- Oracle certainly won't.) It rocks.
Your mileage WILL vary, but I'd recommend at least checking it out. Either http://www.ibphoenix.com/ [ibphoenix.com] or http://www.firebirdsql.org/ [firebirdsql.org].
Re:Yeah, but does it have sub second Timestamps? (Score:2, Informative)
I have checked out Firebird in the past and it looks great - but there's a huge chicken and egg problem. Basically, to adopt a DB requires that it be supported in the languages I use - and for scripting this kind of thing I use Ruby. I can't find any firebird support, native or otherwise, for Ruby, let alone support in the more high-level libraries like ActiveRecord or DataMapper.
I'm not trying to put down the project - it looks great. But I can't possibly afford the time or resources to develop all my own libraries from scratch. That might sound selfish, like I'm all take and no give, and expect everything to be packaged nicely just for me - but I don't think so, I contribute where I can. I just can't do that kind of thing alone. I have deadlines and a budget, and to try to trailblaze a new path supporting a newish, as-yet pretty obscure DB would be suicidal.
If firebird really pans out and becomes a (widely accepted) viable alternative to the "majors" I will be there contributing patches and doing what I can. But I can't be the lone crusader who starts down that path. To be brutally honest, judging from past experience, it will probably have to be the developers themselves who start that ball rolling.
For now, the path of least resistance for me (and MANY others) is to stick with PGSQL. Changing DBs is not the big deal you might think, since I have access to all the above-mentioned tools - I could change to MySQL in just a few hours of work (and then a few more hours for the imports to finish/propogate!), just like I switched to PGSQL when MySQL's timestamp limitation became a big problem. No big deal, and I generally keep everything DB-agnostic. Switching to an unsupported (by my favourite libraries) database would be a very big deal, however, and I just don't have the resources, or - frankly - a good enough reason.
Thanks for the suggestion though and I will definitely keep an eye on the project.
Re:Thanks for the correction (Score:5, Informative)
And anyone who likes to bitch about MySQL deserves an Oracle bill.
Or they could use Postgres...
Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
...The only thing that really "breaks" from 4 > 5 is database permissions.
And most (all?) shared hosting are handling permissions at their admin level by necessity.
The first time I did this upgrade, probably 2005 or so, I was genuinely surprised at how painless it is.
And the pain-points that are left are SO worth it. MySQL 4 is a toy. It's worse than Access.
And we're not just talking about the lack of "advanced" features like triggers, sprocs, udf's. We're talking about no support for things like nested SELECT's. It's atrocious. The query optimizer is absurd. IIRC, there is actually a performance difference if you join in the WHERE clause opposed to an explicit join in the FROM clause. Now, I'm all for "proper" sql, meaning joins SHOULD be explicit. But the fact is that this query:
is logically identical to:
and for a query optimizer to create a different query plan for them is just inexcusable.
MySQL 4 is the reason so many people think poorly of the DB.