MariaDB 5.5 is now GA

Well, as you or may not have heard, MariaDB 5.5 (5.5.23) was declared GA last week!

It was only about 6-ish weeks ago that MariaDB 5.5 had been released as alpha, so the fact it’s already GA is excellent news for all MariaDB users (and MySQL 5.5 users looking to migrate).

Some of the 5.5 enhancements include:

• Significantly more efficient thread pool, comparable in functionality to the closed source feature in MySQL Enterprise.
• Non-blocking client API Library (MWL#192)
• @@skip_replication option (MWL#234)
• SphinxSE updated to version 2.0.4.
• “extended keys” support for XtraDB and InnoDB
• New INSTALL SONAME statement
• New LIMIT ROWS EXAMINED optimization.
• mysql_real_connect() Changes
  In MySQL, and in MariaDB versions before 5.5.21, mysql_real_connect() removes from the MYSQL object any options set with mysql_option() when it fails. Beginning with MariaDB 5.5.21, options are preserved by a failing mysql_real_connect(); use mysql_close(), as normal, to clear them.
  This only has effect if the MYSQL object is reused after a mysql_real_connect() failure (which is unusual). No real-life incompatibilities are expected from this change (it is unlikely that an application would rely on options being automatically removed between connection attempts).
• The variables replicate_do_*, replicate_ignore_*, and replicate_wild_* have been made dynamic, so they can be changed without requiring a server restart. See Dynamic Replication Variables for more information.
• Updates to performance schema tables are not stored in binary log and thus not replicated to slaves. This is to ensure that monitoring of the master will not cause a slower performance on all slaves. This also fixes a crash on the slaves.

Here is the official “What is MariaDB 5.5″ page:

http://kb.askmonty.org/en/what-is-mariadb-55

Also of interest:

Release Notes
Changelog
General Info

And as always, if you’d like full support for MariaDB, just contact us at SkySQL.

Hope this helps.