Major post-GA features in the 5.7 release!
Interesting developments in the MySQL world – it can now be used as a document store and you can query the database using JavaScript instead of SQL (via the MySQL Shell). There is also a new X Plugin (see: mysql-5.7.12/rapid/) (which now makes use of protocol buffers (see: mysql-5.7.12/extra/protobuf/)). I will agree, this is more than just a maintenance release.
Do get started playing with MySQL Shell. If you’re using the yum repository, remember to ensure you have enabled the mysql-tools-preview in /etc/yum.repos.d/mysql-community.repo. And don’t forget to load the X Plugin in the server! I can’t wait for the rest of the blog posts in the series, and today just took a cursory look at all of this — kudos Team MySQL @ Oracle.
However, I’m concerned that the GA is getting what you would think of as more than just a maintenance release. We saw 5.7.11 get at rest data encryption for InnoDB, and now 5.7.12 getting even more changes. This is going to for example, ship in the next Ubuntu LTS, Xenial Xerus. Today it has 5.7.11, but presumably after release it will be upgrade to 5.7.12. I am not a huge fan of surprises in LTS releases (predictability over 5 years is a nice thing; this probably explains why I still have a 5.0.95 server running), but I guess this small band-aid is what we need to ensure this doesn’t happen going forward?
As for the other question I’ve seen via email from several folk so far: will MariaDB Server support this? I don’t see why not in the future, so why not file a Jira?
This is a major feature indeed. The new protocol ships as a plugin with 5.7.12 and is not loaded by default. So this should not change anything until you actually load the new plugin. With a long release cycle adding new functionality in plugins is a good way to allow new features without forcing new behavior on people who just want stability.
I’m thinking of it from a building the package standpoint actually.