Sun Microsystems releases MySQL 5.1

SANTA CLARA, USA: Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.1, a major new release of the world's most popular open source database.

"MySQL 5.1's low total cost combined with its high performance, scalability and enterprise-class features is the right database solution for many large corporations and Web companies, especially in today's economic climate," said Marten Mickos, senior vice president, Database Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "With more than a quarter of a million downloads of MySQL 5.1 in its first ten days, we are proud to deliver this robust product that is garnering such interest from the open source community."

New industry research shows the continued growth and maturation of the market for open source database management systems (DBMS). In Gartner, Inc.'s "The Growing Maturity of Open-Source Database Management Systems", Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Donald Feinberg reports a 50 percent  increase from 2007 to 2008 in the usage of open source DBMSs in production.

MySQL becoming more attractive in India

The report repeats previous findings that revenue growth in the open source DBMS segment grew at a rate of 42 percent from 2006 to 2007, far outpacing the overall DBMS market at 13 percent. Moving forward, Gartner projects 40 percent CAGR growth in the open source DBMS segment over the next five years, resulting in an estimated $1 billion market by 2013.

Feinberg offers guidance and advice to those considering open-source DBMS products: "The cost benefits of using an open-source DBMS is increasing and the risk of using it is decreasing. Open-source DBMS engines can be used today for non-mission-critical applications with reduced risk over several years ago." Moreover, "if the technical capabilities of the staff are strong, use of an open-source DBMS in mission-critical environments is possible now, with obvious implications to the cost of resources to manage the DBMS and applications." Finally, "only use an open-source DBMS engine supplied by a vendor who controls or participates in the engineering of the DBMS and always purchase subscription support when used in production environments."

MySQL 5.1 is available now for a wide variety of hardware and software platforms, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Enterprise Linux Server, Microsoft Windows, Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), Macintosh OS X, Free BSD, HP-UX, IBM AIX, IBM i5/OS and other popular Linux distributions.