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MySQL 5.4 Feature Summary :: 1 MySQL 5.4 Introduction
2 Platform Availability and Installation/Upgrade Considerations »
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1. MySQL 5.4 Introduction

The Sun MySQL Performance and Scalability Project aims at identifying and solving performance and scalability issues for MySQL Server in InnoDB, Falcon, and MySQL Cluster. Currently, project investigations focus primarily on InnoDB.

This document describes the MySQL 5.4 release developed by this project. MySQL 5.4 is based on MySQL 5.1 but includes small, high-impact changes to improve MySQL Server performance, particularly with regard to scalability. These changes exploit advances in hardware and CPU design and enable better utilization of existing hardware. MySQL 5.4 currently has Beta status.

The following list summarizes areas of emphasis within MySQL 5.4. Later sections provide additional information.

  • The principal emphasis is to improve scalability on multi-core CPUs. The trend in hardware development now is toward more cores rather than continued increases in CPU clock speeds, which renders “wait until CPUs get faster” a nonviable means of improving database performance. Instead, it is necessary to make better use of multiple cores to maximally exploit the processing cycles they make available. MySQL 5.4 takes advantage of features of SMP systems and tries to eliminate bottlenecks in MySQL architecture that hinder full use of multiple cores. The focus has been on InnoDB, especially locking, memory management, and thread concurrency.

  • InnoDB I/O subsystem changes enable more effective use of available I/O capacity.

  • Several modifications improve operation of MySQL Server on Solaris.

  • There is better access to execution and performance information. Diagnostic improvements include DTrace probes, expanded SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS output, and new status variables.

  • The “out of box” configuration provides better choices of default option and system variable values for MySQL operation on up to 16-way x86 servers and 64-way CMT servers with 4GB or more memory.

MySQL 5.4 incorporates work from several sources, such as community patches and modifications developed by MySQL Scalability and Performance Project members and other MySQL engineers.

The following sections describe the systems for which MySQL 5.4 is available and characteristic features of MySQL 5.4 that distinguish it from MySQL 5.1.