Oracle has 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, the MySQL 5.5 release candidate showcases the latest enhancements in performance and scalability, availability and usability.

Enhances Capabilities for Business Applications

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

Improved performance and scalability:

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.

Higher availability:

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 synchronization issues, helping improve the reliability and availability of data by reducing the risk and impact of master/slave synchronization issues.

Improved usability:

Improved index and table partitioning enables RANGE and LIST partitions to be defined on date, datetime, varchar, and char columns, simplifying and extending MySQL and adding flexibility to indexing and query tuning.

DBAs and developers can save time using the ANSI/ISO standard SIGNAL/RESIGNAL syntax inside stored routines, including triggers, to raise an error condition invoking specific error handling within their applications.

Enhanced diagnostics, including a new ERFORMANCE_SCHEMA, provide low-level diagnostics on MySQL server performance statistics, allowing DBAs to pinpoint resource-intensive processes and events, streamlining efforts and helping to enhance their productivity.

MySQL 5.5 Release Candidate Demonstrates Significant Performance Gains in Real-World Tests

In recent benchmarks using the release candidate for MySQL 5.5, compared to MySQL 5.1, results demonstrated marked performance improvements:

On Windows: up to 1,500 percent performance gains for Read/Write operations, and up to 500 percent gain for Read Only(1).

On Linux: up to 360 percent performance gain in Read/Write operations and up to 200 percent improvement in Read Only(2).

Supporting Quotes

“We continue to invest in MySQL technology and support the thriving MySQL user community,” said Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect. “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 maximize 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.”

“I’m really blown away by MySQL 5.5‘s improvements,” said Don MacAskill, CEO, SmugMug. “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!”