The 5.6 series for MySQL has reached the point where Oracle feels comfortable in releasing an updated MySQL Enterprise Edition for its paying customers. The Enterprise Edition components included in this release are:
- MySQL Enterprise Security (PAM and Windows authentication plugins)
- MySQL Enterprise Audit
- MySQL Thread Pool.
Previously these extensions were only available for MySQL 5.5 users.
MySQL 5.6 improves security features such as how it encrypts key configuration files and user passwords, but the big news is the improvements to InnoDB. The last major impediment to using this storage engine is the lack of full text indexing, which has finally been corrected.
A feature that is sure to make DBAs happy is the introduction of online DDL for InnoDB. Many common operations such as adding, renaming, and removing columns can be performed without preventing concurrent queries. Most of the online DDL operations can be performed in-place, though some data copying or reorganization may be involved.
The MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual includes a full list of new features.