Sun delivers its first MySQL update

Sun has delivered a "near final" build of the next version of MySQL and has promised to make no changes to the culture of the open-source database organisation whose $1bn (£500m) purchase was announced in January.

A release candidate of Version 5.1 of MySQL can be downloaded now, but the full production version should be ready by June, said Marten Mickos, former chief executive of MySQL and now a Sun vice president. He has no desire to repeat the bug problems of MySQL 5.0, which the company released two years ago, he told the sixth annual MySQL Conference & Expo, in Santa Clara, California, this week.

The new version should respond faster to queries, thanks to better partitioning, and also allow different forms of replication. It will have a new event scheduler that lets users schedule recurring tasks and an upgrade adviser that automatically monitors enterprise installations of the database.

Version 5.1 is available for free under the General Public License (GPL) or in an enterprise edition, with support paid for by subscription. There is also an embedded edition for OEMs to bundle with hardware.

Mickos told the conference that he had no regrets about accepting Sun's offer and giving up plans to float MySQL, despite showing a photo of a "sad moment" as MySQL executives burnt the legal documents for that planned IPO (initial public offering).

MySQL is in use at Amazon and Google, and Sun intends to bring it to more large customers, Sun chief executive Jonathan Schwartz told the conference. He promised to add scale and better support for back-end applications to compete with IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.