New Version of the World's Most Popular Open Source Database Delivers up to 15 Percent Higher Performance for Large-Scale Enterprise Applications

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the pending general availability of MySQL 5.1, a new version of the world's most popular open source database, designed to improve performance and simplify management of large database applications.

The announcement was made this morning at the sixth annual MySQL Conference and Expo. With nearly 2,000 attendees, it is the world's largest community event for open source database developers, users, DBAs, vendors and corporate IT managers.

"If our users initially choose MySQL because of its low cost, they continue to use MySQL for its high performance, scalability and broad platform support," said Marten Mickos, SVP, Database Group, Sun Microsystems. "MySQL 5.1 continues this tradition by performing up to 15 percent faster than previous versions in our own internal tests - making it a compelling solution for demanding Web-based enterprise applications."

"We're using MySQL 5.1 in production for a Weblog discovery code database which indexes approximately 18 million URLs per day," said Kevin Burton, founder and CEO of Spinn3r.com. "The new features in 5.1 extend the ease-of-use, scalability, and performance that MySQL is already famous for, so it can continue to meet the increasingly-demanding requirements of today's database applications."

MySQL 5.1 features a number of new enterprise enhancements, including:

• Table and Index Partitioning - MySQL 5.1 supports five forms of horizontal data partitioning: range, hash, key, list, and composite. By partitioning table and index data, faster query response times can be achieved as only the relevant partitions of data need to be scanned, instead of the entire table or index. Further, various storage and other maintenance operations are made much easier and accomplished more quickly via partitioning.
• Row-Based and Hybrid Replication - Two new replication options are now available in MySQL 5.1. Row-based replication replicates the data changes between a master server and its slave servers, and hybrid replication uses either statement-based or row-based replication depending on the individual SQL operations - these achieve and maintain the most efficient and safest replication scheme for the application.
• Event Scheduler - This new tool allows developers and DBAs to automatically schedule common recurring SQL-based tasks to execute on the database server. It provides greater support for database-specific tasks than is available through CRO