After a little over a year of development work and a few preview releases, Oracle is announcing the general availability of MySQL Cluster 7.3.This brings a number of important new features and enhancements to the open source clustering module for the MySQL database.But the real big news in this announcement is the long-awaited inclusion of the support of foreign key constraints, which had been one of the most requested feature enhancements for the database in the past three years.
MySQL's Cluster feature differs from its more powerful cousin, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), in that it uses a "shared nothing" architecture, where none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. In that implementation, its design is closer to how IBM's DB2 handles clustering than to RAC.With MySQL Cluster 7.3, the system can now automatically enforce foreign key referential integrity between tables, regardless of whether they are located in different nodes, different partitions, or even in different data centers.An important point to mention here is that foreign key support is also available whether the application accesses the database via SQL or via one of the various non-SQL APIs that are available, such as Java, Memcached, or HTTP/REST.The new version's SQL layer is now based on the latest MySQL 5.6 release, which allows database admins to combine the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster storage engines side-by-side on the same MySQL 5.6 server.MySQL Cluster 7.3 also adds another major non-SQL access method, namely JavaScript support via Node.js. This allows applications written in JavaScript to directly access MySQL Cluster data stores without translating queries to and from SQL.However, even those users who aren't interested in the new features might want to upgrade, as version 7.3 reportedly delivers between 1.5 and 7.5 times more data throughput to cluster nodes. It does this in a manner that is completely transparent to applications, meaning system admins should see their applications' performance improve as soon as they upgrade to version 7.3.Setting up new clusters is also easier than ever, thanks to a new auto-installer that allows IT managers and admins to graphically configure and provision a cluster within a few minutes using a browser-based interface.The full set of changes from the previous release can be reviewed in Oracle's official release notes. MySQL Cluster is open source software released under the GPLv2 license, and Oracle also offers commercial support along with a number of proprietary add-on features in the form of its MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) product.But there are other ways to cluster a MySQL database, including ScaleDB and Galera, the latter being a set of patches that bake clustering support into the MySQL server itself.In particular, those who have already migrated from MySQL to the competing MariaDB fork will want to consider one of the above options, as MariaDB does not support MySQL Cluster's NDB storage engine per default.The GPL-licensed version of MySQL Cluster 7.3 is available for download from Oracle's MySQL website as of now.After a little over a year of development work and a few preview releases, Oracle is announcing the general availability of MySQL Cluster 7.3.This brings a number of important new features and enhancements to the open source clustering module for the MySQL database.But the real big news in this announcement is the long-awaited inclusion of the support of foreign key constraints, which had been one of the most requested feature enhancements for the database in the past three years.MySQL's Cluster feature differs from its more powerful cousin, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), in that it uses a "shared nothing" architecture, where none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. In that implementation, its design is closer to how IBM's DB2 handles clustering than to RAC.With MySQL Cluster 7.3, the system can now automatically enforce foreign key referential integrity between tables, regardless of whether they are located in different nodes, different partitions, or even in different data centers.An important point to mention here is that foreign key support is also available whether the application accesses the database via SQL or via one of the various non-SQL APIs that are available, such as Java, Memcached, or HTTP/REST.The new version's SQL layer is now based on the latest MySQL 5.6 release, which allows database admins to combine the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster storage engines side-by-side on the same MySQL 5.6 server.MySQL Cluster 7.3 also adds another major non-SQL access method, namely JavaScript support via Node.js. This allows applications written in JavaScript to directly access MySQL Cluster data stores without translating queries to and from SQL.However, even those users who aren't interested in the new features might want to upgrade, as version 7.3 reportedly delivers between 1.5 and 7.5 times more data throughput to cluster nodes. It does this in a manner that is completely transparent to applications, meaning system admins should see their applications' performance improve as soon as they upgrade to version 7.3.Setting up new clusters is also easier than ever, thanks to a new auto-installer that allows IT managers and admins to graphically configure and provision a cluster within a few minutes using a browser-based interface.The full set of changes from the previous release can be reviewed in Oracle's official release notes. MySQL Cluster is open source software released under the GPLv2 license, and Oracle also offers commercial support along with a number of proprietary add-on features in the form of its MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) product.But there are other ways to cluster a MySQL database, including ScaleDB and Galera, the latter being a set of patches that bake clustering support into the MySQL server itself.In particular, those who have already migrated from MySQL to the competing MariaDB fork will want to consider one of the above options, as MariaDB does not support MySQL Cluster's NDB storage engine per default.The GPL-licensed version of MySQL Cluster 7.3 is available for download from Oracle's MySQL website as of now.
MySQL's Cluster feature differs from its more powerful cousin, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), in that it uses a "shared nothing" architecture, where none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. In that implementation, its design is closer to how IBM's DB2 handles clustering than to RAC.With MySQL Cluster 7.3, the system can now automatically enforce foreign key referential integrity between tables, regardless of whether they are located in different nodes, different partitions, or even in different data centers.An important point to mention here is that foreign key support is also available whether the application accesses the database via SQL or via one of the various non-SQL APIs that are available, such as Java, Memcached, or HTTP/REST.The new version's SQL layer is now based on the latest MySQL 5.6 release, which allows database admins to combine the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster storage engines side-by-side on the same MySQL 5.6 server.MySQL Cluster 7.3 also adds another major non-SQL access method, namely JavaScript support via Node.js. This allows applications written in JavaScript to directly access MySQL Cluster data stores without translating queries to and from SQL.However, even those users who aren't interested in the new features might want to upgrade, as version 7.3 reportedly delivers between 1.5 and 7.5 times more data throughput to cluster nodes. It does this in a manner that is completely transparent to applications, meaning system admins should see their applications' performance improve as soon as they upgrade to version 7.3.Setting up new clusters is also easier than ever, thanks to a new auto-installer that allows IT managers and admins to graphically configure and provision a cluster within a few minutes using a browser-based interface.The full set of changes from the previous release can be reviewed in Oracle's official release notes. MySQL Cluster is open source software released under the GPLv2 license, and Oracle also offers commercial support along with a number of proprietary add-on features in the form of its MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) product.But there are other ways to cluster a MySQL database, including ScaleDB and Galera, the latter being a set of patches that bake clustering support into the MySQL server itself.In particular, those who have already migrated from MySQL to the competing MariaDB fork will want to consider one of the above options, as MariaDB does not support MySQL Cluster's NDB storage engine per default.The GPL-licensed version of MySQL Cluster 7.3 is available for download from Oracle's MySQL website as of now.After a little over a year of development work and a few preview releases, Oracle is announcing the general availability of MySQL Cluster 7.3.This brings a number of important new features and enhancements to the open source clustering module for the MySQL database.But the real big news in this announcement is the long-awaited inclusion of the support of foreign key constraints, which had been one of the most requested feature enhancements for the database in the past three years.MySQL's Cluster feature differs from its more powerful cousin, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), in that it uses a "shared nothing" architecture, where none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. In that implementation, its design is closer to how IBM's DB2 handles clustering than to RAC.With MySQL Cluster 7.3, the system can now automatically enforce foreign key referential integrity between tables, regardless of whether they are located in different nodes, different partitions, or even in different data centers.An important point to mention here is that foreign key support is also available whether the application accesses the database via SQL or via one of the various non-SQL APIs that are available, such as Java, Memcached, or HTTP/REST.The new version's SQL layer is now based on the latest MySQL 5.6 release, which allows database admins to combine the InnoDB and MySQL Cluster storage engines side-by-side on the same MySQL 5.6 server.MySQL Cluster 7.3 also adds another major non-SQL access method, namely JavaScript support via Node.js. This allows applications written in JavaScript to directly access MySQL Cluster data stores without translating queries to and from SQL.However, even those users who aren't interested in the new features might want to upgrade, as version 7.3 reportedly delivers between 1.5 and 7.5 times more data throughput to cluster nodes. It does this in a manner that is completely transparent to applications, meaning system admins should see their applications' performance improve as soon as they upgrade to version 7.3.Setting up new clusters is also easier than ever, thanks to a new auto-installer that allows IT managers and admins to graphically configure and provision a cluster within a few minutes using a browser-based interface.The full set of changes from the previous release can be reviewed in Oracle's official release notes. MySQL Cluster is open source software released under the GPLv2 license, and Oracle also offers commercial support along with a number of proprietary add-on features in the form of its MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) product.But there are other ways to cluster a MySQL database, including ScaleDB and Galera, the latter being a set of patches that bake clustering support into the MySQL server itself.In particular, those who have already migrated from MySQL to the competing MariaDB fork will want to consider one of the above options, as MariaDB does not support MySQL Cluster's NDB storage engine per default.The GPL-licensed version of MySQL Cluster 7.3 is available for download from Oracle's MySQL website as of now.
