Version 5.0 of the Uppsala, Sweden-based company’s MySQL database will include support for stored procedures, triggers, and views, making it more suitable for existing enterprise applications.
Adding these critical enterprise features to the database has taken MySQL a while, mainly because it did not want them to impact on the performance of the database serving more modern web-based applications, according to vice president of marketing, Zack Urlocker.
Most new application development separates the business logic from the user interface, so you’re better off putting it in the application server level rather than store it in the database. We wanted to implement procedures without making it heavyweight and slowing it down, he said. In the past we hadn’t come up with a clever way to make it [stored procedures support] very fast, and we believe if you don’t use a technology you shouldn’t have to pay for it in terms of performance.
The approach MySQL has come up with is to enable a mix of storage engines, so that if an application needs to make use of stored procedures in the database it can, while applications that do not require it will not experience performance degradation.
Having entered alpha testing in January 2004, MySQL 5.0 will move to beta testing in December and is expected to be generally available at the end of the first quarter or beginning of the first quarter of 2005.
The functionality will better enable MySQL to compete with the likes of Oracle Corp, Microsoft Corp, and Sybase Inc for established application deployments, but MySQL CEO, Marten Mickos, insisted the company is not out to take on the likes of Oracle.
The database landscape is such a vast landscape and there are some areas where we have no applicability, he said. In most of our successes we run side by side with Oracle. Mickos described MySQL’s sweet spots as web interface, web front end, business intelligence, and data warehousing deployments.
We would never tell people ‘change your database’, added Zurlocker, because [for a database administrator] that’s a career threatening move. Instead, he said, many customers use the database for individual projects or development, before realizing that it is more than suitable for full-production deployment.
