MySQL Database Now Provides Full Transaction Support

SEATTLE - (September 23, 2002) - MySQL Inc., developer of the world's most popular Open Source database, today announced that the MySQL database now provides full support for transactions to enable the development of e-commerce and other robust, business-critical applications. The standard version of the MySQL database now includes a high-performance transactional storage engine with crash recovery and other capabilities that will significantly extend MySQL's role in the enterprise database market.

"Our transactional engine has already been tested and proven by millions of users in the Open Source community to be an extremely reliable back-end that offers many of the features necessary to develop heavy-duty applications," said Marten Mickos, MySQL CEO. "Now, MySQL users can get the best of both worlds — transaction support with high concurrency for enterprise applications as well as our non-transactional architecture for lightning fast websites. We anticipate that the new features along with its low cost of ownership will make MySQL an even more attractive option for enterprise users."

High Performance Transaction Support

MySQL now includes the ACID-compliant InnoDB transactional storage engine, which is designed for very high performance and scalability when processing large data volumes and under high concurrency. Consistent with all MySQL offerings, InnoDB is easy to use and highly reliable, having been battle-tested by the Open Source community. InnoDB is now tightly integrated with MySQL and provides many features key to e-commerce and other transaction-based database applications, including:

• Full transaction support, with commit, rollback and crash recovery capabilities to ensure full data consistency, even if hardware fails
• Advanced row-level locking without requiring lock escalation for maximum read/write concurrency without compromising lock integrity
• Multi-versioning to provide concurrency while maintaining maximum data integrity
• Non-locking reads, consistent with Oracle's style, to enable fast reads even when the database is engaged in heavy updates

MySQL with InnoDB Gets Top Scores in Benchmark

In a recent database benchmark by Ziff Davis Media Inc., and published in eWeek magazine, the MySQL database with InnoDB came out as a winner among the server databases reviewed from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sybase, on a Java-based application server. In the results, MySQL/InnoDB is presented as having the overall best performance and scalability along with Oracle9i. To see the full review, go to this link.

Many organizations are already relying on MySQL with InnoDB to manage large, high performance databases. Slashdot, a popular, traffic-heavy website for the technology and science communities, has been running on MySQL since the site's inception in 1997.

"We've done lots of work with InnoDB tables," said Brian Aker, senior architect at Slashdot. "It's been a great addition to MySQL, and it's very easy. And because many of the same performance-tuning tricks work with InnoDB and popular proprietary databases, it's easy to switch to MySQL from a database like Oracle."

InnoDB Now Standard in MySQL

The MySQL database is available in three product configurations: MySQL Pro, MySQL Max and MySQL Classic. MySQL Pro is the standard MySQL offering and now includes the InnoDB storage engine for full transaction support. MySQL Max includes all MySQL Pro functionality as well as the Berkeley DB storage engine (BDB) and other new leading-edge features. MySQL Classic is designed for users who do not require support for transactions.

In addition to InnoDB, all MySQL database products come with additional non-transactional storage engines, such as the HEAP in-memory storage engine and the MyISAM standard and read-only compressed storage engines. These high-performance, efficient storage engines are ideal for applications that do not require transactions, such as logging and read/write mostly applications. The MySQL database provides a unique separation of the storage engine from the core server to give users unequaled flexibility in choosing a storage engine that meets their specific needs. For instance, users can run MySQL under InnoDB for secure business transactions or use MyISAM for ultra-fast transaction-less disk access, whichever is most appropriate. MySQL even allows the use of different storage engines within the same application.

InnoDB Tightly Integrated

MySQL has a long-term strategic partnership with Innobase Oy, the company that developed and maintains InnoDB, resulting in tight integration of InnoDB and MySQL in many areas. In addition to product integration, MySQL provides the full range of technical support for MySQL with InnoDB, as well InnoDB training, custom development, documentation and product testing. MySQL and Innobase Oy also participate in ongoing joint marketing and sales activities.

"Innobase Oy and MySQL work together in all areas — product development, support, marketing and sales — which has proven to be a great benefit to the user, as well as to the two companies," said Heikki Tuuri, Innobase Oy president and CEO. "We are committed to maintaining our strong partnership as we move forward and MySQL with InnoDB becomes a prevailing solution for mission-critical transactional applications."

Free Hot Back-up with MySQL Support

For a limited time, users who purchase a MySQL/InnoDB support contract receive free licensed copies of InnoDB Hot Backup, an Innobase Oy-designed tool that allows users to backup a running InnoDB database without setting any locks or disturbing normal database processing. This means there are virtually none of the performance penalties often associated with making a backup while a database is fully operational. InnoDB Hot Backup is available under a proprietary license only and is not a free Open Source product. This offer can save users the $400 per copy license fee.

Pricing and Availability

The MySQL database with InnoDB is available for download from the MySQL website at www.mysql.com/products/index.html. MySQL is available for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or under a non-GPL commercial license for proprietary use. For information about MySQL commercial licenses and pricing, please go to https://order.mysql.com or, email MySQL at sales@mysql.com or call US 425-743-5635

For information about the InnoDB Hot Backup promotion, please go to www.mysql.com/support/faq-11.html#q01

For general information about InnoDB, please visit the MySQL website at www.mysql.com/doc/en/InnoDB_overview.html or the Innobase Oy site at www.innodb.com.

About MySQL

MySQL Inc. develops, markets and supports the MySQL database server, the world's most popular Open Source database. With an estimated four million installations and up to 27,000 software downloads per day, MySQL is the de facto Open Source database leader and is quickly becoming the core of many high-volume, business-critical applications. Major corporations such as Yahoo!, Lucent Technologies, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, Motorola, NASA, Silicon Graphics, HP, Xerox and Cisco rely on the ultra-fast, highly-reliable MySQL database. MySQL is available under the Free Software/Open Source GNU General Public License (GPL) or a non-GPL commercial license. For more information about MySQL, please go to www.mysql.com.

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