MySQL Notes
A bit of a gotcha maybe, especially if you're used to the PostgreSQL CLI (where -U specifies the user name):
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 4
Server version: 5.1.41-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql> create database some_database;
Ignoring query to other database
mysql> show databases;
Ignoring query to other database
mysql> Bye
Although the connection to MySQL was seemingly successful, any commands only seem to result in the laconic message "Ignoring query to other database". I'm not quite sure why this happens, but -U has the following meaning in MySQL:
-U, --i-am-a-dummy Synonym for option --safe-updates, -U.
Once again a bit of a head-scratcher which would be helped at the very least by less ambiguous notification messages.
According to the changelog for the 5.1.12 beta release:
Incompatible change: Support for the BerkeleyDB (BDB) engine has been dropped from this release. Any existing tables that are in BDB format will not be readable from within MySQL from 5.1.12 or newer. You should convert your tables to another storage engine before upgrading to 5.1.12.
An interesting perspective from Lisa Vaas of eWeek.com on Oracle's purchase of InnoDB: The Truth Comes Out: Oracle Bought InnoDB Without a Clue
In MySQL, user is not a reserved word and can be used as-is
as a table name. As web applications in particular often have their own
user table, it is in common use, which is perfectly understandable.
However, according to the various ANSI SQL standards, user
is a reserved word (see e.g. here or here), and this leads to problems when converting
MySQL schema definitions to other databases, such as that described
here.
Note that as of MySQL 5.0.19, even when selecting MySQL's ANSI Mode, "user" does not appear to treated as a reserved word,
and no warnings are given when it is used to create a table.
This news.com article names some dates for the introduction of the new database engine from Solid™ Inc.: a prototype will be demonstrated on April 24, a beta with sourcecode will be available in July, and the release version will come "in the fourth quarter" (presumably of 2006).
The new engine will be dual-licensed (GPL / commercial) along the same lines as InnoDB.