MySQL 5.7.5 Overview and Highlights

MySQL 5.7.5 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.7, and is the “m15″ or “Milestone 15″ release), and is available for download here and here.

As for the fixes/changes, there are quite a few (the official release was split into 3 separate emails), which is expected in such an early milestone release.

The main highlights for me were (though the enhancements, and potentially impactful changes, are definitely not limited to this list):

  • InnoDB: The innodb_buffer_pool_size parameter is now dynamic, allowing you to resize the buffer pool without restarting the server. The resizing operation, which involves moving pages to a new location in memory, is performed chunks. Chunk size is configurable using the new innodb_buffer_pool_chunk_size configuration option. You can monitor resizing progress using the new Innodb_buffer_pool_resize_status status variable. For more information, see Resizing the InnoDB Buffer Pool Online.
  • Replication: When replicating from a master running a version earlier than MySQL 5.6.0 [Read "5.5" or "5.1"] to a slave running MySQL 5.6.0 or later, the slave requires the master_uuid value, which is the server_uuid value from the master. The master_uuid value is unsupported on the older master, and in such a replication situation could become invalid on the newer slave. A check for empty master_uuid now ensures that the slave uses an empty value for master_uuid. (Bug #18338203)
  • Incompatible Change: mysql_install_db has been rewritten from Perl into C++. This enables it to be provided as an executable binary and eliminates its dependency on having Perl installed.
  • MySQL builds on Windows using Visual Studio now require Visual Studio 2013 or later. The previous requirement was Visual Studio 2010 or later. (Bug #18404381)
  • Now, MYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE is on by default when compiling debug builds with GCC, and MYSQL_MAINTAINER_MODE enbles -Werror regardless of whether GCC or Clang is used.
  • MySQL now includes DTrace support on Oracle Linux 6 or higher with UEK kernel. If DTrace is present, server builds will detect it with no special CMake options required.
  • Incompatible Change: A new log record type (MLOG_FILE_NAME) is used to identify file-per-table tablespaces that have been modified since the last checkpoint. This enhancement simplifies tablespace discovery during crash recovery and eliminates scans on the file system prior to redo log application. For more information about the benefits of this enhancement, see Tablespace Discovery During Crash Recovery. This enhancement changes the redo log format, requiring that MySQL be shut down cleanly before upgrading to or downgrading from MySQL 5.7.5.
  • Incompatible Change: The InnoDB storage engine can no longer be disabled. The –skip-innodb option is deprecated and has no effect, and its use results in a warning. It will be removed in a future MySQL release. This also applies to its synonyms (–innodb=OFF, –disable-innodb, and so forth). A new innodb_lock_no_retry flag for the –debug option is now available.
  • Incompatible Change: The Performance Schema now provides a user_variables_by_thread table that exposes user-defined variables. For more information, see Performance Schema Connection Attribute Tables. In consequence of this change, the server now limits user-defined variable names to a maximum of 64 characters, the length of the VARIABLE_NAME column in the table. Previously, the server did not enforce a limit.
  • The optimizer computes more accurate costs for semi-join materialization. (Bug #18558561)
  • To generate execution plans, the optimizer uses a cost model that is based on estimates of the cost of various operations that occur during query execution. The optimizer has a set of compiled-in default “cost constants” available to it to make decisions regarding execution plans. The optimizer now has in addition a database of cost estimates to use during execution plan construction. These estimates are stored in the server_cost and engine_cost tables in the mysql system database and are configurable at any time: Any non-NULL cost estimate stored in the cost model tables overrides the corresponding compiled-in default estimate. Any NULL estimate indicates to the optimizer to use the compiled-in default. Implementation and testing is ongoing to make it safe for DBAs to change these values. Currently, changing them should be considered at your own risk. If you upgrade to this release of MySQL from an earlier version, you must run mysql_upgrade (and restart the server) to incorporate these changes into the mysql database.
  • The optimizer now uses more exact index statistics. Currently, the improved values are used by InnoDB, with these effects: 1) In many cases, better execution plans result for queries for which previously a less optimal join index or table join order was chosen. 2) The row estimates in EXPLAIN output are more accurate, as well as the filter values in some cases. 3) Cardinality estimates in the index statistics displayed by SHOW INDEX are more accurate for InnoDB tables.
  • During query execution plan construction, the optimizer now uses condition filtering to make better use of all conditions on a table in determining the estimate of qualifying rows that will be joined to the next table. For example, even though there might be an index that can be used to select rows, there might also be additional conditions in the WHERE clause that can further restrict the estimate for qualifying rows. Use of additional conditions is controlled by the condition_fanout_filter flag of the optimizer_switch system variable. This flag is on by default but can be disabled to suppress use of condition filtering (for example, for a query that is found to perform better without it).
  • Security Note: Incompatible Change: MySQL 5.6 deprecated passwords that used the older pre-4.1 password hashing format. Support for these passwords is now removed, which involves the following changes. Applications that use any feature no longer supported must be modified. The mysql_old_password authentication plugin is removed. The –secure-auth option to the server and client programs is the default, but is now a no-op. It is deprecated and will be removed in a future MySQL release. The –skip-secure-auth option to the server and client programs is no longer supported and using it produces an error.
  • Incompatible Change: Strict SQL mode for transactional storage engines (STRICT_TRANS_TABLES) is now enabled by default.
  • InnoDB: SPATIAL indexes can now be used for InnoDB tables. InnoDB supports indexing of spatial data types, including use of ALTER TABLE … ALGORITHM=INPLACE for online operations (ADD SPATIAL INDEX). To support transaction isolation properties, InnoDB uses predicate locking. A predicate lock locks the minimum bounding rectangle (MBR) used for a query so that other transactions cannot insert or modify a row that would match the query condition.
  • Incompatible Change: Previously, mysql_upgrade performed an upgrade by invoking the mysql and mysqlcheck clients. mysql_upgrade has been reimplemented to generate the required SQL statements itself and execute them by communicating directly with server.
  • Incompatible Change: In MySQL 5.6.6, the YEAR(2) data type was deprecated. Support for YEAR(2) has now been removed. Once you upgrade to MySQL 5.7.5 or newer, any remaining YEAR(2) columns must be converted to YEAR(4) to become usable again. For conversion strategies, see YEAR(2) Limitations and Migrating to YEAR(4). For example, run mysql_upgrade after upgrading.
  • Incompatible Change: The GET_LOCK() has been reimplemented using the metadata locking (MDL) subsystem and its capabilities have been extended.
  • InnoDB: For optimal shutdown and recovery performance, shutdown and recovery phases are now supported by the multi-threaded page cleaner feature (innodb_page_cleaners) that was introduced in MySQL 5.7.4. (Bug #18805275)
  • InnoDB: Instead of inserting one index record at a time, InnoDB now performs a bulk load when creating or rebuilding indexes. This method of index creation is also known as a “sorted index build”. This enhancement, which improves the efficiency of index creation, also applies to full-text indexes.
  • InnoDB: InnoDB memory allocations now are instrumented for the Performance Schema and will appear in the memory summary tables.
  • InnoDB: You can now truncate undo logs that reside in undo tablespaces. This feature is enabled using the innodb_undo_log_truncate configuration option. For more information, see Truncating Undo Logs That Reside in Undo Tablespaces.
  • InnoDB: Work was done to introduce the notion of attachable transactions in InnoDB (for AutoCommit / ReadOnly / ReadCommitted / NonLocking transactions). This is used to read from InnoDB Data Dictionary tables. Along with this, attachable transactions were exposed to the server. Data Dictionary access code will use them to read Data Dictionary data.
  • Replication: Retrying of transactions is now supported when multi-threading is enabled on a slave. In previous versions, slave_transaction_retries was treated as equal to 0 when using multi-threaded slaves. (Bug #16390504, Bug #68465)
  • Replication: Global transaction identifiers (GTIDs) are now logged in a MySQL system table whenever they are enabled on the server, which lifts a previous requirement to use binary logging when replicating with GTIDs. If binary logging is disabled, the server stores the GTID for each transaction in the mysql.gtid_executed table as the transaction is executed. If binary logging is enabled, then, whenever the binary log is rotated or the server is shut down, the server also writes into the new binary log the GTIDs for all transactions from the previous binary log.
  • Replication: The new variable simplified_binlog_gtid_recovery can be used to change the way binary log files are searched for previous GTIDs during recovery, speeding up the process when a large number of binary log files exist. (Bug #69097, Bug #16741603, Bug #74071, Bug #19686914)
  • Replication: Multi-threaded slaves can use the new slave_preserve_commit_order variable to ensure that the order which transactions were committed on the master is preserved on the slave. This prevents the slave from entering a state that the master was not in and is well suited to using multi-threaded slaves for replication read scale-out.
  • Replication: The new options binlog_group_commit_sync_delay and binlog_group_commit_sync_no_delay_count provide a way to configure the synchronization of the binary log. This enables more transactions to be synchronized together to disk at once, reducing the overall time to commit a group of transactions because the larger groups require fewer time units per group.
  • Replication: To make monitoring of a replication setup easier, various replication related variables have been moved to the performance_schema tables. This is particularly helpful for monitoring multi-source replication.
  • The mysqladmin flush-logs command now permits optional log types to be given, to specify which logs to flush. Following the flush-logs command, you can provide a space-separated list of one or more of the following log types: binary, engine, error, general, relay, slow. These correspond to the log types that can be specified for the FLUSH LOGS SQL statement. Thanks to Daniël van Eeden for the patch. (Bug #60878, Bug #12368203)
  • Scalability for InnoDB tables was improved by avoiding THR_LOCK locks. As a result of this change, DML statements for InnoDB tables that previously waited for a THR_LOCK lock will wait for a metadata lock. (Bug #42147, Bug #11751331)
  • The Boost.Geometry library now is required to build MySQL.

And that pretty much just covers the highlights of the “Functionality Added or Changed” section. I’m not even getting into the “Bugs Fixed” section, of which there were 296 (many InnoDB & Replication)! So there has been a lot going on in this release. If you’re running some 5.7 version, then you should definitely upgrade. (But this should not be used for production systems yet, of course.)

You can view the full 5.7.5 changelogs here:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/5.7/en/news-5-7-5.html

Hope this helps.