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1.5. MySQL 4.0 in a Nutshell

MySQL 4.0 is available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/ and from our mirrors. MySQL 4.0 has been tested by a large number of users and is in production use at many large sites.

The following features were added in MySQL 4.0:

  • Speed enhancements

    • MySQL 4.0 implemented a query cache that can give a major speed boost to applications with repetitive queries. See Section 7.5.4, “The MySQL Query Cache”.

    • MySQL 4.0 further increased the speed of MySQL Server in a number of areas, such as bulk INSERT statements, searching on packed indexes, full-text searching (using FULLTEXT indexes), and COUNT(DISTINCT).

  • InnoDB storage engine as standard

  • New functionality

    • The enhanced FULLTEXT search capabilities of MySQL Server 4.0 enabled FULLTEXT indexing of large text masses with both binary and natural-language searching logic. It became possible to customize minimal word length and define your own stop word lists in most human languages, enabling a broader class of applications to be built with MySQL Server. See Section 11.8, “Full-Text Search Functions”.

  • Standards compliance, portability, and migration

    • MySQL Server added support for the UNION statement, a standard SQL feature.

    • Starting with version 4.0, MySQL runs natively on Novell NetWare 6.0 and higher. See Section 2.7, “Installing MySQL on NetWare”.

    • Features to simplify migration from other database systems to MySQL Server include TRUNCATE TABLE (as in Oracle) and identity as a synonym for automatically incremented keys (as in Sybase).

  • Internationalization

    • German-speaking users should note that MySQL 4.0 added support for a new character set, latin1_de, which ensures that words with umlauts are sorted in the same order as in German telephone books.

  • Usability enhancements

    • As of version 4.0, most mysqld parameters (startup options) can be set without taking down the server. This is a convenient feature for database administrators. See Section 12.4.4, “SET Syntax”.

    • Multiple-table DELETE and UPDATE statements were added.

    • On Windows, symbolic link handling at the database level was enabled by default. On Unix, the MyISAM storage engine added support for symbolic linking at the table level (and not just the database level as before).

    • The addition of the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS and FOUND_ROWS() functions made it possible to find out the number of rows a SELECT query that includes a LIMIT clause would have returned without that clause.

  • The Embedded MySQL Server

    The embedded server library added in this release can easily be used to create standalone and embedded applications. The embedded server provides an alternative to using MySQL in a client/server environment.

    The libmysqld embedded server library made MySQL Server suitable for a wider range of applications. Using this library, developers can embed MySQL Server into various applications and electronics devices, where the end user has no knowledge of there actually being an underlying database. Embedded MySQL Server is ideal for use in Internet appliances, public kiosks, turnkey hardware/software combination units, high performance Internet servers, self-contained databases distributed on CD-ROM, and so on.

    The embedded MySQL library uses the same interface as the normal client library. See Section 17.5, “libmysqld, the Embedded MySQL Server Library”. Embedded MySQL is available under the same dual-licensing model as the MySQL Server; see http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/ for more information.

    On Windows there are two different libraries:

    libmysqld.lib Dynamic library for threaded applications.
    mysqldemb.lib Static library for not threaded applications.

The news section of this manual includes a more in-depth list of MySQL 4.0 features. See Section B.2, “Changes in Release 4.0.x”.