Every year new products are released. In IT, it’s no different. I’ve seen a lot of good things launched, reissued, copied… But I’ve also seen a lot of technological junk and marketing fluff. In these 34 years in IT, I’ve seen it all. The database world is no different.
MySQL stumbled on some releases. But that’s not the case with version 8.0, which brings some significant improvements. In my opinion, what really matters:
Data Dictionary: Anyone with many objects in their instance will understand what I mean. I have clients with over 3 million objects, and it’s no fun running a simple SELECT on (DES)INFORMATION_SCHEMA. Instance locks, slowness, LOCKS (yes, LOCKS!). The new data dictionary arrives just in time and seems to solve this problem.
ROLES! Nothing makes more sense than grouping a bunch of roles and assigning them to a user instead of the endless hassle of assigning privileges one by one. The most obsessive probably already created a stored procedure to copy privileges. But stop! We’re in the 21st century, it was about time!
Invisible Indexes: Don’t get it? Why would I want an index that MySQL can’t see or use in any query? Ah, young Padawan, I’ll explain. Have you ever dropped an index on a huge table, regretted it, and then spent a whole season of Game of Thrones waiting while it rebuilt? That’s the advantage of invisible indexes. You put an index on ice; if no one misses it after some time, you drop it.
Infinite hassle in MySQL? You keep doing “SET GLOBAL” this and that, then have to edit my.cnf (or my.ini) to persist the changes made inline. Now with SET PERSIST, MySQL does the obvious—it persists inline command changes. Of course, this only applies to dynamic variables, i.e., those that can be changed while MySQL is running.
SQL Parser: This is a legacy from the MySQL AB days. Sun bought MySQL in 2008 and acted like it wasn’t their problem. I keep saying Sun was the worst thing to happen to MySQL and its users. Then, in 2010, Oracle bought Sun and got MySQL as a bonus. Since 2010, Oracle has been making changes to MySQL’s internal “compiler,” making it lighter, simpler, and faster. In MySQL 8.0, it underwent major modifications allowing Oracle to make MySQL even more powerful.
SQL Cost: Finally! MySQL’s explain was weak! Reminded me of those ’90s commercials about “weak English.” The little-known profiling helped to understand queries, but still didn’t give a good idea of query “cost.” It’s not perfect, but the new query cost model implemented in MySQL 8.0 is an excellent and welcome initiative.
And there’s much more. It’s been a while since I got this excited about a product launch, especially MySQL. It’s not in production yet, and I believe that will happen between April and June 2017, but it already shows what Oracle intends with MySQL: to slow down SQL Server’s growth.
SQL Server versions 2012, 2014, and 2016 elevated SQL Server to a serious database server. Result: 65% growth in installed base over the last 4 years. Currently, Oracle DB holds 1st place, closely followed by MySQL in 2nd, and right behind accelerating is SQL Server in 3rd. Oracle DB hasn’t lost its crown but has lost nearly 12% of its user base in 4 years. MySQL has kept growing but at a more modest pace than between 2000–2010.
Bottom line: Oracle followed Harley-Davidson’s path by listening to customers and making radical changes under the hood, while including everything that had been requested (and almost begged for) for years. Harley responded to the market with Project Rushmore; Oracle responded with MySQL 8.0.
And why 8.0? Surely the 8 follows 5.7, then 5.8. Why jump from behind to ahead? I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, we see Oracle 15 and MySQL 15 released simultaneously. Got it? Or do you want me to draw?
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