5.0 went into production in autumn 2005.
The 5.1 series was in production from 2008 through 2013.
Early in 2009 MySQL introduced the 5.4-5.5-5.6 series. 5.4 was never made generally available; it was replaced by 5.5. New features included scalability improvements, a new INNODB engine, proxy logins, and features backported from the 6.0 series including SIGNAL and RESIGNAL error messaging. It was stable and in production 2010 through 2018.
5.6, released for general use in Feb 2013, added crash-safe binary logs; SQL partition support; UUIDs for each server instance; delayed and multi-thread replication; row image control in replication; performance_schema enhancements; better optimisation of JOIN, WHERE and LIMIT clauses; better information_schema InnoDB metadata; microsecond support in columns that store time; and much needed, much improved error info retrieval with the new GET DIAGNOSTICS command.
Current editions 5.7 went into general release in October 2015. It offers improved security, logging and Triggers; it supports subqueries in Views, JSON columns and indexable derived columns in tables; and fixes many 5.5 and 5.6 bugs.
8.0 appeared as a development release in September 2016, in General Availability release in 2018. It has expanded regex (long overdue), improves InnoDB, and moves system tables and the global data dictionary to it; adds considerable
JSON
functionality; revises partitioning; adds persistent global variables; adds
binary strings to bit function scope; improves query parsing and index use; and adds
component-based infrastructure, SQL roles, a utf8mb4
collation.
Recursion-capable Common Table Expressions are implemented (they were already in
MariaDB 10.2.2); Chapter 20 of Get It Done has examples. There is also support
for OVER()
and Windowing/Analytic functions.
The first 8.0 General Availability release was 8.0.11. Later releases fioxed many bugs and implemented more major improvements. 8.0.13 introduced indexing on expressions including native functional calls. 8.0.16 (finally!) implemented Check Constraint. 8.0.17 added an InnoDB cloning plugin. 8.0.18 added random password generation and Explain Analyze for iterator-based timing, cost, and other query execution info in tree format. 8.0.20 enhanced Check Constraint on replication slaves and query use of Hash Joins. 8.0.21 refined InnoDB row locking and group replication. 8.0.22 introduced more replication refinements including aliases for the traditional but offensive SQL keywords "master" and "slave". 8.0.23 added support for invisible columns. 8.0.24 extended windowing and casting values to geospatial values.
Get It Done covers all 5.0, 5.1, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, 8.0 releases, also features from the abandoned version 6.0 that haven't yet been ported to currently active MySQL releases.
We've also put up links to the MySQL Server Developmnt Team's development notes on new featuress in 8.0 under "Version Notes" on our Tips page.
"This is, without a doubt, the best of all the books on MySQL I've found." -- Phil Mickelson
"Excellent book." -- Michael K. Peterson
"Looks like the book to get if you are a MySQL programmer." -- Jim Lawrence
"A complete MySQL resource." -- Diego Medina
"Your website "Get it Done with MySQL 5&Up" is simply awesome and thank you again." -- Balaji Thiayagarajan
"*Splutter*, *gasp*--YES! How the heck did you do that? It worked like a charm first try. Wonderful, sir--you just tell me where to send the baked ham, and it's yours." -- Max Loeb
Who Knows Where The Time Goes? is a full account of how to implement time validity and point-in-time architecture using MySQL 5, with 70 working SQL scripts.
Visual Studio and MySQL is an 80-page walkthrough with analysis, explanation and source code for two perfectly general and complete standalone .NET versions of a Windows database-enabled application, one for MySQL databases, one for SQL Server databases. Runtime ComboBox selection of database and tables, master-detail grids, just-in-time on-the-fly DataGridView lookup browse windows, general-purpose Find dialogs, a ListView lookup browser, and more.
Try it! Browse the sample chapters from the links down the left side of this page.
For more samples of our take on MySQL, see the Common Queries and MySQL Tips pages.