Oracle Rolls Out MySQL 5.5 Release Candidate

Continuing to deliver new innovations to MySQL, Oracle on Sunday announced the availability of the release candidate for MySQL 5.5, the world’s most popular open-source database, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Announced during the first MySQL Sunday event at Oracle OpenWorld 2010 show in San Francisco on 19 September, the MySQL 5.5 release candidate showcases the latest enhancements in performance and scalability, availability and usability, Oracle said in a press release describing the news.

Performance boost

The MySQL 5.5 release candidate helps improve the performance and scalability of applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, and Mac.

MySQL Server and InnoDB have been enhanced to provide optimum performance and scalability when running on the latest multi-CPU and multi-core hardware and operating systems. InnoDB is now the default storage engine for MySQL Server, delivering ACID transactions, referential integrity, and crash recovery.

“We continue to invest in MySQL technology and support the thriving MySQL user community,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s chief corporate architect, in a statement. “The availability of MySQL 5.5 release candidate is a testament to Oracle’s focus on helping not only LAMP users, but also Windows users maximise the performance and reliability of critical application environments while reducing cost. Oracle now has two superior database alternatives to SQLServer, both delivering better value and broader platform support to end users and ISVs.”

New semi-synchronous replication improves failover reliability by allowing the master to proceed without waiting for all the slaves to acknowledge. Once one slave acknowledges, the transaction can be committed. This also helps improve data integrity. Replication Heart Beat enables faster detection, diagnosis and correction of master/slave synchronisation issues, helping improve the reliability and availability of data by reducing the risk and impact of such issues.

The new release also features several new usability enhancements, the company said.

Benchmarks

And in recent benchmarks using the release candidate for MySQL 5.5, compared to MySQL 5.1, results demonstrated marked performance improvements. These improvements Include, on Windows: up to 1,500 percent performance gains for Read/Write operations, and up to 500 percent gain for Read Only, Oracle said. And on Linux: up to 360 percent performance gain in Read/Write operations and up to 200 percent improvement in Read Only, Oracle said in its press release.

“I’m really blown away by MySQL 5.5’s improvements,” said Don MacAskill, chief executive of SmugMug, in a statement. “You can now have a whopping 128K transactions in flight. Best of all, it’s far more performant than it used to be. Thank you Oracle!”