This week’s iPod nano winner is a long-time MySQL community member: Jocelyn Fournier.

Jocelyn is one of most productive beta testers of MySQL ever, and he certainly has not slowed down his path now with MySQL 5.0.

Jocelyn is using MySQL to power a bulletin board “MesDiscussions.Net” (”My Discussions”), which is used by some big French websites. There, he does practical stress testing of MySQL from both a performance and feature standpoint.

Performance-wise, he has more than 2300 simultaneous connections on peak on forum.hardware.fr.

Jocelyn tries to integrate each of the new features MySQL offers in his software to get the best out MySQL, and I’m pleased to quote his comment: “the achieved speed is really amazing “.

Merci, Jocelyn!

Dear user of MySQL,

It is my pleasure to announce the production release of MySQL 5.0, which is hereby GA (Generally Available). Since my announcement of the Release Candidate less than a month ago, no bugs have been reported that require a second Release Candidate. This, combined with the feedback from over two million downloads of MySQL 5.0 during its beta phase, give us the confidence to give MySQL 5.0 the status of Current Production Release, or GA.

In the Release Candidate announcement less than a month ago, I described MySQL 5.0 as “the most important release in MySQL’s history”, and that is certainly the case. Thus, I encourage you all to:

• get your own copy at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html
• do all of your new database development using MySQL 5.0
• upgrade your current MySQL environments to MySQL 5.0, as soon as you’ve properly verified your production applications against it (be sure to take a full backup of your data before upgrading, study the relevant documentation, and if you have a MySQL Network support contract, consult first with the MySQL Support Team)

Let me also underline that we continue to offer some earlier versions of MySQL Server for download. However, you should expect maintenance releases for earlier versions only in limited form:

• for MySQL 4.1, only when serious bugs affecting significant user groups are reported
• for MySQL 4.0, only when security bugs are reported

MySQL 5.0 is the most ambitious release to date for MySQL AB. We have added functionality that our users have requested from us over many years. However, everything we do at MySQL centers around our three priorities of Performance, Reliability, and Ease of Use. MySQL 5.0 is certainly true to these company-wide values.

Key new features of MySQL 5.0 come in three groups:

1. ANSI SQL standard features formerly unknown to MySQL
2. ANSI SQL standard compliance of existing MySQL features
3. New MySQL Storage Engines, Tools and Extensions

1. 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)

2. 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 set of tables that provide database metadata, in parallel with 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

3. New MySQL Storage Engines, Tools and Extensions are:

• XA Distributed Transactions
• ARCHIVE Storage Engine for storing large amounts of data without
  indexes in a very small footprint, intended for historical data that
  may be needed for future audit compliance (Sarbanes Oxley or
  otherwise)
• FEDERATED Storage Engine for accessing data ín tables of remote
  databases rather than in local tables (only in MAX version)
• Instance Manager: a tool to start and stop MySQL Server, even remotely

To find out more details on what’s new in MySQL 5.0, follow the pointers from http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql-5-0-nutshell.html

To find out the changes specific to MySQL 5.0.15 in relation to 5.0.13 (the release candidate), see the two files http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/news-5-0-14.html and http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/news-5-0-15.html (5.0.14 was not released publicly).

MySQL 5.0 is also reflected in our GUI tools and Connectors:

MySQL Administrator 1.1.4 and MySQL Query Browser 1.1.17 are aware of the new MySQL 5.0 features. They can be used to write and test stored procedures, create views, include them in scheduled backups and much more.

The latest shipping versions of our Connectors work with MySQL 5.0, and all connectors (MySQL Connector/ODBC, Connector/J and Connector/NET) support all MySQL 5.0 flagship features.

Of course, we recognize that any piece of software contains bugs. We continue to need your involvement to ensure that MySQL 5.0 is the best that it possibly can be. Should you find any issues in MySQL 5.0, report them through our bug-reporting system at http://bugs.mysql.com/ and we will improve upon MySQL 5.0 in upcoming maintenance releases.

The MySQL team looks forward to your input

• in our MySQL Forums at http://forums.mysql.com/
• in the bug database at http://bugs.mysql.com/
• in our mailing lists at http://lists.mysql.com/
• in the PlanetMySQL blog aggregation via http://www.planetmysql.org/newfeed.php
• in the User Comments of our manual at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/index.html (specifically for Documentation comments)
• and in the form of downloads from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html

MySQL 5.0 is available now. Go download it, install it, and take benefit from its many new features.

And do keep us informed on how MySQL can help support you!

Kaj Arnö
VP Community Relations
MySQL AB

Richard Stallman, Tim O’Reilly, Alan Cox, Rasmus Lerdorf and Monty Widenius endorse Florian Müller’s candidacy in the “European of the Year 2005″ internet poll.

I had the pleasure to interact with Tim, Alan and Rasmus on EuroOSCON in Amsterdam this week, and they all considered voting for Florian’s to be an important way to increase the political weight of the concerns towards SWPATs.

The press release on NoSoftwarePatents.com cites as a reason that Florian “runs on a NoSoftwarePatents ticket, and that is the message we want to reinforce”:

In a NoSoftwarePatents press release, the community leaders today expressed their support for the voting recommendations that NoSoftwarePatents.com has published in more than a dozen languages: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html. Participants in the poll are required to make a choice in each of ten categories, and the voting list provided by NoSoftwarePatents.com explains the role that various candidates played in the software patent debate so that voters can reward the opponents of software patents and penalize pro-patent politicians.

Mueller’s endorsers pointed out that the FOSS community has played a particularly active role in the fight against software patents, but that software patents “threaten us all because they don’t discriminate based on programming language, operating system, or licensing model”. The group is “disconcerted by early reports” that the EU is now looking at alternative ways of giving software patents a stronger legal basis in Europe, such as an EU community patent regulation.

The endorsement furthermore stated: “Some other nominees also stand for valid concerns and noble causes. However, those issues and individuals have already received a lot of coverage in the mass media, while the implications of software patents to the whole world, including developing countries, still require much more public awareness. In the sense that software patents monopolize mental steps, they are also a human rights issue.”

Now there is a convenient and easy way for developers across the world to vote against software patents.

As I noted earlier, there is an ongoing election for European of the Year. But there have been hurdles for those who wish to vote. Sure you can vote at http://www.ev50.com/poll/, but honestly, do you know whether you would prefer Anna Marszalek of Rzeczpospolita or Alina Mungiu-Pippidi of the Romanian Academic Society to become Journalist of the Year? At least I strongly dislike the risk of voting against my own true opinion, and just in order to vote against Software Patents by voting for Florian Müller, I need to express an opinion in ten different areas.

FFII and Florian Müller, with some PHP coding help from MySQL AB, just made it easier. For those who are informed about Software Patents, it’s a no-brainer to support Michel Rocard for MEP of the year and not to support Charlie McCreevy for Commissioner of the Year. That, and other thoughts, are now collected into a PHP script which is shameless enough to come with a suggestion on how to vote. Try it out at http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/ev50/vote.html, and then see if you feel comfortable to vote at http://www.ev50.com/poll/. BTW, if you vote, you’ll still have to confirm your vote by replying to an email automatically sent to you by EV50.

Florian and me shaking hands (right before I went to Oktoberfest)

24-27 April 2006 may seem to be far away today. But 7 November 2005 is not far from now, and that’s when we need you to submit your proposals. There’s a fair amount of them already, but you’ve still got about three weeks to submit more.

In 2005, we had well over a thousand attendees. We sold out on our tutorials on Performance and Cluster. Our development team enjoyed meeting with our users and, I hope, vice versa. At least we had great fun in Arjen’s and my “Quiz show” with difficult questions on MySQL history and trivia.

The theme for the 2006 MySQL UC conference is “Discover. Connect. Succeed. Scale Your Business with MySQL.” I’m looking forward to the challenging task to pick the best presentations!

Thanks to all the visitors to my three pages of Body painting pictures! A bit of statistics from the click-throughs in the httpd access log helped me change my entries in the Photo Awards 2005 competition that I mentioned in an earlier blog. You seemed to like the Belly Dancer a lot, so I chose the following two pics for the contest!

Alex Barendregt, the event organiser, promised to put my galleries online on the official gallery collection of the World Bodypainting Festival. Let’s see what happens!

Autriche, douze points!

OK, so this is not the Eurovision song contest (*) and I don’t specifically vote for Austria (**), but this week’s winner comes from Austria and is nobody else than Markus Popp, who has won an iPod nano!

Markus has started a free MySQL db hosting service that uses MySQL 5.0 at http://www.db4free.net/ and is an active blogger at http://db4free.blogspot.com/

Markus is actively soliciting for input on MySQL 5 on his webpage. And of course, he has submitted bug reports to MySQL — the basic goal of our contest.

Good job, Markus!

(*) For our non-European readers: that’s a yearly classic event going on since tens of years, which everybody watches but nobody admits watching.

(**) Although I would have reason to do so, since they host interesting events that I have taken pictures at.

Dear MySQL user,

MySQL AB and the Free / Open Source database market today received some unexpected recognition by Oracle, through their acquisition of Innobase Oy.

So what does this have to do with MySQL?

Well, Innobase is the provider of the popular InnoDB Storage Engine in MySQL. One of the things our users appreciate about MySQL is its unique pluggable storage engine architecture. You have the flexibility to choose from number of storage engines including MyISAM, Memory, Merge, Cluster and InnoDB. And with MySQL 5.0, we added the new Archive and Federated storage engines.

Just like the rest of MySQL Server and its Storage Engines, InnoDB is released under the GPL. With this license, our users have complete freedom to use, develop, modify the code base as they wish. That is why MySQL has chose the GPL: to protect the freedom that users value in free / open source software.

In their press release Oracle states:

“InnoDB is not a standalone database product: it is distributed as a part of the MySQL database. InnoDB’s contractual relationship with MySQL comes up for renewal next year. Oracle fully expects to negotiate an extension of that relationship.”

We have also issued a press release where Mårten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, states:

“This announcement represents further validation of the open source movement. The beauty of open source software and the GPL license is freedom. As with all MySQL code, InnoDB is provided under the GPL license, meaning that users have complete freedom to use, develop, and modify the code base. We are pleased to see even broader industry acceptance of open source database technology. This also means that database developers now have even greater flexibility to use MySQL and Oracle in the same environment.”

For you as a MySQL user, I want to stress a couple of further points of the “don’t worry” type:

• we remain committed to support our existing clients and users, using InnoDB and other storage engines
• we will continue to provide development and bug-fix resources for InnoDB users
• we continue to sell to our prospects and woo new users, using InnoDB and other storage engines
• there will be no impact on MySQL 5.0, scheduled for GA in Q4, 2005
• we will continue to include InnoDB in future releases of MySQL
• Innobase Oy is a separate company — and is not a part of MySQL AB; Oracle has no ownership of MySQL AB
• we will work with Oracle as a normal business partner

Go MySQL!

Kaj Arnö
VP Community Relations
MySQL AB

OK, so we know we have two million beta downloads for MySQL 5.0 — but sometimes we still crave for more feedback. Nothing beats hearing from the individual users.

Today, Mark Rais of Really Linux, author of the book “Linux for the Rest of Us“, made my day by emailing me:

Just figured I’d write briefly to let you know I’ve had a bit more time to look at all the goodies and have to say that 5.0 is truly fantastic!
I have spent a lot of time working in Sybase and Oracle environments and believe that 5.0 is going to make a serious play for that space. Outstanding stuff!!!

Thanks, Mark!

And all the rest of you: Keep letting us know how you think we’re doing!

If NewsForge, SourceWire and Linux PR report about it, it must be true: I’m now officially “Vice President of Open Source Community Relations”.

I’m happy to notice the news got picked up by many sites, such as the International PHP Magazine, as well as by Toolinux in French.

The official press release on my appointment and the one on MySQL 5.0 Release Candidate seem to have found its way to plenty of places. Less than two months ago, googling for “Kaj Arnö” gave 631 hits, when it today gave me 12,800 hits. A growth of 1928 % in two months would normally be something to remember to tell the grandchildren about, but I suspect Google improved its search coverage at the same time, and I am sure a lot of the 12,800 are headlines in pages from which I will disappear as soon as I appeared there.

OK, that’s enough of narcissism for a while.

And thanks to everyone who has sent me congratulations!