MySQL Community Server versions

v5.7 [May 23, 2013]
Optimizer Notes
- It is now possible to provide hints to the optimizer by including /* ... */ comments following the SELECT, INSERT, REPLACE, UPDATE, or DELETE keyword of SQL statements. Such statements can also be used with EXPLAIN.
Packaging Notes
- Several binary distribution types have been made more modular, to split out test components into a separate distribution file. This reduces the size of the main download. In addition to the previously available test/debug distributions already available for Windows Zip archives, RPM packages, and Debian packages, the current release makes separate test distributions available for Solaris PKG files, and generic binary Linux and OS X compressed tar packages. These separate distributions have “test” in the distribution file name.
- Generally, use of a test distribution requires that the main distribution is also installed. Additionally, for Solaris, the main and test distributions must be for the same version of MySQL.
Performance Schema Notes
- These Performance Schema changes have been made:
- - The MySQL sys schema is now installed by default during data directory installation. This is a set of objects that provides convenient access to data collected by the Performance Schema.
- - For new installations, mysql_install_db installs the sys schema. To permit this behavior to be suppressed, mysql_install_db now has a --skip-sys-schema option.
- - For upgrades, mysql_upgrade installs the sys schema if it is not installed, and upgrades it to the current version otherwise. To permit this behavior to be suppressed, mysql_upgrade now has a --skip-sys-schema option.
- - For sys schema usage instructions, see https://github.com/MarkLeith/mysql-sys.
- - The events_statements_history and events_transactions_history consumers now are enabled by default.

v5.6 [Jul 29, 2011]
Security Notes
- Security Fix: The linked OpenSSL library for the MySQL 5.6 Commercial Server has been updated from version 1.0.1g to version 1.0.1h. Versions of OpenSSL prior to and including 1.0.1g are reported to be vulnerable to CVE-2014-0224. This change does not affect the Oracle-produced MySQL Community build of MySQL Server 5.6, which uses the yaSSL library instead.
DTrace Support
- MySQL now includes DTrace support on Oracle Linux 6 or higher with UEK kernel. If DTrace is present, server builds will detect it with no special CMake options required.
InnoDB Notes
- Important Change: Redo log writes for large, externally stored BLOB fields could overwrite the most recent checkpoint. The 5.6.20 patch limits the size of redo log BLOB writes to 10% of the redo log file size. The 5.7.5 patch addresses the bug without imposing a limitation. As a result of the redo log BLOB write limit introduced for MySQL 5.6, innodb_log_file_size should be set to a value greater than 10 times the largest BLOB data size found in the rows of your tables plus the length of other variable length fields (VARCHAR, VARBINARY, and TEXT type fields). Failing to do so could result in “Row size too large” errors. No action is required if your innodb_log_file_size setting is already sufficiently large or your tables contain no BLOB data.
Functionality Added or Changed
- Replication: The system variable binlog_impossible_mode controls what happens if the server cannot write to the binary log, for example, due to a file error. For backward compatibility, the default for binlog_impossible_mode is IGNORE_ERROR, meaning the server logs the error, halts logging, and continues updates to the database. Setting this variable to ABORT_SERVER makes the server halt logging and shut down if it cannot write to the binary log.
- The mysqlhotcopy utility is now deprecated and will be removed in a future version of MySQL. Among the reasons for this: It works only for the MyISAM and ARCHIVE storage engines; it works on Unix but not Windows. Alternatives include mysqldump and MySQL Enterprise Backup.
- CMake support was updated to handle CMake version 3.