Oracle has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5. The new release delivers enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X.
MySQL 5.5 is the first major MySQL server release which has been done under Oracle's reign and it is also represents the first time the InnoDB team, which was acquired by Oracle back in 2005, and the MySQL team worked together to create a new release, Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
In beta since April of this year, and available as release candidate since September, MySQL 5.5 benefited from community involvement and feedback, and continues to be available under GPL, according to Monica Kumar, senior director of product marketing, Oracle. Release 5.5 is available for free download.
In addition to a strong focus on growing the MySQL community, Kumar notes that "by delivering new features, performance enhancements, quality improvements, we are enhancing the product so that customers and users can have a better experience." There is also significantly more integration with Oracle Database, she adds.
The MySQL Database and InnoDB storage engine have been enhanced to provide optimum performance and scalability when running on the latest multi-CPU and multi-core hardware and operating systems. In addition, with release 5.5, InnoDB is now the default storage engine for the MySQL Database, delivering ACID transactions, referential integrity and crash recovery. For higher availability, new semi-synchronous replication and Replication Heart Beat improve failover speed and reliability. In addition, improved index and table partitioning, SIGNAL/RESIGNAL support and enhanced diagnostics, including a new PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA, improve the manageability of MySQL 5.5.
With this release, MySQL is also adding a focus on Windows, says Kumar. "Windows is the number-one development platform for MySQL and we are continuing to see the deployment of Windows increase, so with this new release, we have done a lot of work to make it a great fit for running on Windows as well."
In recent benchmarks, the MySQL 5.5 release candidate delivered significant performance improvements compared to MySQL 5.1, according to Oracle. Results on Windows included up to 1,500% performance gains for Read/Write operations and up to a 500% gain for Read Only. On Linux, there was up to a 360% performance gain in Read/Write operations and up to 200% improvement in Read Only.