back to article Speedy MySQL 5.6 takes aim at NoSQL, MariaDB

Oracle has announced general availability of MySQL 5.6, even as many MySQL users prepare to transition to alternatives such as MariaDB because of what they claim is Oracle's overweening handling of the open source database. "The new features and enhancements that MySQL 5.6 delivers further demonstrate Oracle's investment in …

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  1. DJV Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Oracle will never learn

    It's OpenOffice all over again.

    I'm hoping someone will fork VirtualBox as well soon to get it out of their clutches.

    1. Bill the Sys Admin
      Linux

      Re: Oracle will never learn

      VirtualBox is still pretty good..? But i never used it before it got gobbled up by Oracle. What changed?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oracle will never learn

        We have had various problems of VirtualBox on Solaris falling over on heavy I/O loads, and Oracle took ages to get back to us and basically there were not even willing to take our money for support.

        So looking now at VMware on Linux.

        1. skytrench

          how about KVM ?

          Have you tried KVM? We switched from vmware, because kvm is better integrated in linux.

    2. Muhammad Imran/mi1400
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Oracle will never learn

      how naive techies can be at al-reg is astonishing... oracle making it expensive has wisdom behind... they cant kill oracle's main DB... they cant pull plug on MySQL to avoid wrath similar to Oracle vs HP... they want to slowly poison MySQL to such a level that till then all major stake holders would have run away by then and after that Oracle will announce that since it is investment burden and no more economically feasable to continue they are disbanding the project, i read this bitch line somewhere else few months back... i guess nokia saying ditto same for QT development.

  2. ElReg!comments!Pierre

    Uncomfortable to say the least

    OpenOffice, Java, VirtualBox, Itanium support... can you see the trend?

  3. Moof
    Meh

    PostgreSQL

    In the meantime I will stick with PostgreSQL and not have to worry about it.

    1. Skrrp
      Thumb Up

      Re: PostgreSQL

      Postgres for me too. It's the only sane choice these days.

  4. Fazal Majid

    +1 for MariaDB

    I switched in September 2010. Putting oneself at the mercy of the professional extortionists at Oracle is not acceptable under any circumstances.

    Whenever possible, I opt for PostgreSQL, and I wish I could be rid of MySQL/MariaDB altogether, but Wordpress and Cacti require it, so I keep MariaDB around for now, bloated as it may be.

  5. Deadlock Victim
    Coat

    Backups?

    Can you take a transactionally consistent backup without locking the entire database yet?

    1. Tim Starling

      Re: Backups?

      That's always been possible with InnoDB. Use mysqldump --single-transaction.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Backups?

        Yes but Because a consistent read is not isolated from those statements, using them on a table being dumped can cause the underlying SELECT statement of mysqldump to return incorrect contents or fail.

        No the most encouraging thing to read about a backup program,

        Anyway mysqldump still sucks huge balls. There is no binary format and copy support is limited to physical access to the server and doesn't support pipes so no compression is possible.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Backups?

          Is that a recent change then? cos when i used to use mysqldump to do backups of my personal website, i remember quite happilly piping the output through gzip.

        2. Tim Starling

          Re: Backups?

          @Charlie Clark: like spodula says, it does support pipes. If you pipe through gzip then the overhead of not using a binary format is minimal.

          In case there is anyone reading this who, having read the manual and acquired a clue, still has an actual problem with backing up a MySQL database that they wish to solve: with innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1 you can take an snapshot of the data directory, e.g. with LVM. Then to recover, you just restore old data directory and start mysqld -- it will think it crashed, and will recover successfully. If you also enable binlogs and keep copies somewhere safe, you can replay them starting from the time the snapshot was made.

          It's not exactly user-friendly, but it is cheap.

  6. skytrench

    Catching up...

    Looking like a nice release, heavy job for the Mariadb crew to challenge Oracle in delivering a better product.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Catching up...

      For a lot of customers the question is not just "Is this a better database?" but also "What is Oracle's support like in cost & effectiveness?"

      And that is a big enough reason for many to change. Remember the old saying: Oracle doesn't have customers, it has hostages.

  7. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    FAIL

    Rehashed press release

    Considering that Oracle bought InnoDB back in 2005 progress has been remarkably slow: <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-file-defragmenting.html>you still <b>can't</b> recover unused space from at table</a>. There's probably more but I try and spend as little time with it as possible especially now that I can migrate data to Postgres pretty easily.

    MySQL basically is a NoSQL system which supports SQL statements often more in name only. Yes, InnoDB is sort of ACID but it will also support Foreign Keys on non-unique columns. As changing indices imposes a table copy penalty they are definitely discouraged.

    1. stanimir

      Re: Rehashed press release

      *As changing indices imposes a table copy penalty they are definitely discouraged.*

      As of 5.5 it doesn't need to copy the entire table.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Rehashed press release

        @stanimir - thanks for the correction.

    2. Philip Lewis
      Holmes

      Re: Rehashed press release

      Still a toy database then. No news in this thread ...

  8. TeeCee Gold badge
    Devil

    Explanation.

    "Oracle inexplicably changed the file structure of the MySQL code base..."

    Ok, got that.

    "...so that merging all of the existing MariaDB code with the MySQL 5.6 file tree would be 'a very time consuming job.'"

    That sounds like the reason to me. Oracle don't want their hard work ported straight into the competition. It's sort of like Open Source, only with significant amounts of added evil.

    1. Anonymous Dutch Coward
      Pint

      Re: Explanation.

      "significant amount of added evil". Exactly.

      BTW, keyboard says it's glad I wasn't drinking coffee when reading this :)

  9. Philip Lewis
    Headmaster

    past perfect of "got"?

    "...has also gotten some love"

    Ouch, my ear hurts

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    PostgreSQL the only sane choice

    Although MySQL is capable for Enterprise applications it is not free. It is priced on a per CPU basis. MySQL fans will point out they can use MariaDB, but MariaDB doesn’t support Table Partitioning or Online Backups. Some MySQL fans might suggest using CUBRID, but this DB doesn’t support indexes.

    This whole MySQL saga is beginning to look like an Oracle plot. PostgreSQL has many of the features that an Enterprise Application requires and it is totally free.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: PostgreSQL the only sane choice

      I don't love Postgress at all, but compared to the other "free" offerings, it not that bad.

  11. skytrench
    Thumb Up

    Sane choice is least effort

    Mysql is so deeply ingrained in many a system, that it is not a feasible option to change to postgresql. For those riding on the innodb/myisam train any improvements are welcome.

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