Oracle sends out MySQL 5.6 update

Oracle has pushed out MySQL 5.6, a development milestone release of the open-source database management system.

MySQL, the development of which has been stewarded by Oracle since its takeover of Sun, has been tweaked for larger datasets that need to be accessed faster. As a development milestone release, the new version contains the latest features and fixes for the software, but has not been fully validated for production environments.

Oracle continues to innovate and enhance the MySQL database, delivering a higher-performing, more scalable, reliable and easier-to-use MySQL.

– Tomas Ulin, Oracle

"With this first MySQL 5.6 development milestone release, we are offering early access to new stable features for testing," said Tomas Ulin, Oracle's MySQL vice president of engineering, in a statement. "Oracle continues to innovate and enhance the MySQL database, delivering a higher-performing, more scalable, reliable and easier-to-use MySQL."

MySQL is an alternative to Microsoft SQL Server, and its code is available under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. MySQL 5.6 builds on version 5.5, which appeared as a release candidate in September.

MySQL tweaks

Oracle has tweaked the database management software for higher performance by reducing the number of input and output (I/O) operations on the main table wherever possible.

Partitioned tables have gained further features to allow MySQL users to slice a big data set into distinct tables and run different types of statement on the tables, the company said.

Additionally, there are minor improvements intended to reduce overall I/O calls to the basic data table and between the server and storage engine. Replication has been improved as well, to cut down on data wastage.

There is also an experimental feature that gives access to MySQL's core storage from NoSQL databases, which are typically non-relational databases. The feature allows MySQL-stored InnodDB data to be accessed using NoSQL techniques via Memcached, which is a type of server-side storage.

The full list of features in MySQL 5.6 has been posted online by Oracle. The release candidate is available from the downloads section of the website.

In March, a community-generated fork of MySQL 6.0 named Drizzle was released. Drizzle7 can migrate data out of MySQL and serve as a replacement for the Oracle-administered system, according to the open-source project behind the tool. It has been designed for massively parallel web applications.