The first release of MySQL 5.0 has been done. The betas of MySQL 5.0 have already been downloaded two million times, and have thus been tested extensively in a lot of different scenarios. From the feedback we get from our community, we know it is already in production use at numerous sites. Download MySQL 5.0 hereKey new features of MySQL 5.0 come in three groups:
a) ANSI SQL standard features formerly unknown to MySQLb) ANSI SQL standard compliance of existing MySQL featuresc) New MySQL Storage Engines, Tools and Extensions
The new ANSI SQL features include:
- Views (both read-only and updatable views)
- Stored Procedures and Stored Functions, using the SQL:2003 syntax, which is also used by IBM's DB2
- Triggers (row-level)
- Server-side cursors (read-only, non-scrolling)
Implementing ANSI SQL standard ways of using existing MySQL features means there will be fewer unpleasant surprises ("gotchas") for those migrating to MySQL from other database systems:
- Strict Mode: MySQL 5.0 adds a mode that complies with standard SQL in a number of areas in which earlier versions did not; we now do strict data type checking and issue errors for all invalid dates, numbers and strings as expected
- INFORMATION_SCHEMA: An ANSI SQL-compliant Data Dictionary for accessing metadata, in parallel to the MySQL specific SHOW commands
- Precision Math: A new library for fixed-point arithmetic, giving high accuracy for financial and mathematical operations
- VARCHAR Data Type: The maximum effective length of a VARCHAR column has increased to 65,532 bytes; also, stripping of trailing whitespace no longer occurs
Source: MySQL 5.0 Candidate Released