Robin Schumacher

A new poll we’re running on the MySQL web site shows that a lot of folks still aren’t familiar with the strict mode/sql mode setting that was introduced with MySQL 5.0. The sql_mode parameter allows you to have MySQL better enforce data integrity in terms of what data is accepted/rejected by the server. Not having this capability produced a number of gotchas in previous MySQL versions, but in 5.0, these all go away.

The sql_mode config parameter is very flexible in terms of how strong/lax you want to be with respect to having MySQL enforce data integrity. For more information on all the options available to you with the sql_mode parm, see the MySQL Manual. And for a quick primer on sql_mode and how to use it, you can check out an article I wrote on the topic some time back.

All -

I’m pretty excited that 5.1.12 is now out! Thanks to everyone who has been helping us test all the great new features in 5.1 - I hope you’ll download 5.1.12 and keep up the good work. One thing that I especially like about the 5.1.12 beta is that it has the highly requested feature of being able to dynamically turn on/off the general and slow query logs, which makes impromptu tracing of SQL much easier.

Download 5.1.12 and let me know what you think.

Thanks again for supporting MySQL!