The MySQL database engine merry-go-round is continuing to spin. Having "lost" two of its transactional backends to the 800lb gorilla of the database world, Oracle, MySQL has been stepping up efforts to acquire and develop independent technologies. Following onto its acquisition of Netfrastructure, ZDNet reports that Solid™ Information Technology will be making its solidDB Storage Engine for MySQL available as open source under the GPL from June.

What this entails precisely is not clear. Solid seems to specialize in high-performance database solutions for the telecommunications industry with an emphasis on in-memory operations. There appears to be no mention of MySQL on its site, and nor does MySQL have - as of the time of writing - any announcement in its News section.

Presumably the Solid products involved in this will be its BoostEngine™ and / or its EmbeddedEngine™. The specifications are basically the same, promising ANSI SQL-92 Entry Level support and several Intermediate Level enhancements, numerous features of SQL-99 and SQL-2003. More details are available as PDF documents (BoostEngine, EmbeddedEngine)

Exactly how much of this technology will be made available under the GPL is not entirely clear. ZDNet quotes Paola Lubet, Solid's vice president of marketing as saying:

"Our decision at the moment is to go into the open source track and use mySQL as a channel. So we’re going to make available code that works only with mySQL. On the side we have a proprietary line of products."

Paola Lubet, vice president of marketing and business development at Solid, worked at Oracle for seven years and was formerly senior director of database product marketing (so this eWeek.com article says). Oddly enough, Heikki Tuuri (the driving force of InnoDB) used to work for Solid (see this page, about half-way down).

Update: Solid has a page with extensive documentation links here.