Re: CODE: Programming project required

From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Thu Jan 25 2001 - 15:47:25 MST


James Rogers wrote:

> I should mention that I don't want to sound like an Oracle cheerleader,
> because I am not. In fact, I have had a lot of reservations about certain
> features (or lack thereof) in Oracle for some time. Fortunately, the

James, as a professional, what is your assessment of recently released
MySQL 3.23 as compared to Oracle and other (OpenSource) competitors?

http://www.mysql.com/news/article-54.html

MySQL 3.23 Declared Stable

                           2001/01/22

                           MySQL, the worlds most widely used Open Source Database,
version
                           3.23, is now declared stable. It's been almost two years since
the previous
                           version 3.22 was declared stable in January 1999. This means
that
                           MySQL 3.23 can now be safely used in production environments.
                           Version 3.23 was released under the GNU GPL-license in June
2000 and
                           has been available in several pre-stable versions ever since.

                           Apart from being more stable, more optimized and more portable,
the
                           MySQL 3.23 release has several major features not present in
the 3.22
                           or 3.21 releases. These include: full-text search, replication
between a
                           master and many slaves and several new table handlers that
support large
                           files and transactions by using the Berkeley DB library from
Sleepycat
                           Software to implement transaction-safe tables.

                           Chief developer Michael "Monty" Widenius and the MySQL
                           Development Team will now focus on the upcoming 4.0 version of
                           MySQL. The only future changes in version 3.23 will include bug
fixes
                           and some fine tuning of the replication and BerkeleyDB code.

                           To download MySQL 3.23:
                               http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html

                           For a complete changelog of MySQL 3.23:
                               http://www.mysql.com/doc/N/e/News-3.23.x.html

                           To upgrade from MySQL 3.22:
                               http://www.mysql.com/doc/U/p/Upgrading-from-3.22.html

                           Below is a list of the major new features in MySQL 3.23:

                               New Table Handlers
                                    MyISAM is a new SQL tuned ISAM library. MyISAM is the
                                    now the default for MySQL tables (MySQL 3.23 is still
                                    backwards compatible with ISAM). MyISAM provides
                                    increased performance and support for 64bit OS's (thus
                                    supporting large files).
                                    BDB is the Berkeley Database table type. BDB adds
support
                                    for SQL transactions (COMMIT, ROLLBACK). Thus
                                    allowing BDB tables to survive crashes. BDB tables
also
                                    support page-level locking.
                                    HEAP tables are new in-memory table types. They can be
                                    used for extremely fast look-up tables.
                                    MERGE tables are a collection of identical MyISAM
tables
                                    that can be used as one for SELECT, DELETE, UPDATE
                                    statements. MERGE tables can help you manage a set of
large
                                    log tables -- helping to bypass many constraints
associated
                                    with large tables.

                               Any of these table types can be mixed and matched for use
in
                               MySQL 3.23 (specified at the CREATE TABLE ...
                               TYPE={MYISAM, BDB, HEAP, MERGE} SQL statement). This
                               gives Database Administrators the option to have the most
                               optimized database setup to suit their specific needs.

                               Replication

                               One way replication can be used is to increase both
robustness and
                               speed. For robustness two (or more) systems can used to
switch to a
                               backup server if you have problems with the master. The
extra
                               speed is achieved by sending part of the non-updating
queries to the
                               replica server.

                               Replication can also benefit database backup operations.
Live
                               backups of the system can be done on a slave instead of a
master,
                               eliminating potential problems and possible downtime.

                               Full-text Search

                               MySQL 3.23 now has full-text indexing and searching
capabilities.
                               This allows you to search your vast databases of textual
                               information, with queries returning search string
                               occurrence/relevance.

                               Online Table Maintenance

                               MySQL 3.23 now incorporates many of the table maintanence
                               features of the (previously only external) utilities
`(my)isamchk'
                               directly into the MySQL server.

                               The use of these newly incorporated features can help to
eliminate
                               system downtime, by allowing the Database Administrator to
repair
                               damaged tables without shutting-down the MySQL server.



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