Oracle Makes MySQL 5.5 Database Generally Available

Oracle has dispelled some of the concerns about its commitment to a rival database after it announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5, which offers a number of enhancements aimed at improving performance and scalability, as well as a focus on Windows.

The company unveiled the release candidate for the open-source database in September at the Oracle OpenWorld 2010 conference in San Francisco. At the time, the company touted moves meant to bolster performance – particularly improvements to InnoDB, now MySQL’s default storage engine.

But the company also had its eye on Windows users as well.

Performance Enhancements

Some of the key performance enhancements specific to Windows in MySQL 5.5 include Windows native RW-locks, Windows native atomic increments and lightweight native Windows serialisation primitives.

“We’re also focusing on Windows in a big way, because Windows is the No. 1 development platform for MySQL…so a lot of work has been done in 5.5 to make it a great fit for Windows,” said Monica Kumar, senior director of product marketing at Oracle.

As for InnoDB, Oracle has made a number of changes under the hood, including adding the ability to enable multiple buffer pool instances.

“The way we’ve gone about this is first of all when Oracle and MySQL/Sun (Microsystems) joined, we had the InnoDB team together with the MySQL team…sit down in a much (more) sort of closer, cooperative way to work through the bottlenecks in the server,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL development at Oracle.

Cooperative Development

Oracle also added new semi-synchronous replication and improved index and table partitioning.

“We have been using MySQL since 2003 to power our Subscriber Data Management solution,” said Richard Bodin, Senior Manager for the Subscriber Data Management Product Line at Tekelec, in a statement. “MySQL replication is a key component of our multi-layer scalability and high-availability framework. The semi-synchronous replication capabilities built into MySQL 5.5 will enable us to further enhance data integrity for our customers, helping deliver a complete view of subscribers across any network domain for new levels of insight, agility and operational efficiency.”