Dear MariaDB users,

MariaDB 5.2, a branch of the MySQL database which includes all major open source storage engines, myriad bug fixes and many community patches, has been released. It has all changes up to MySQL 5.1.51.

For an overview of what’s new in MariaDB 5.2.3, please see the release notes (5.2.2, 5.2.1, and 5.2.0 also).

MariaDB 5.2 includes a number of user enhancements including:

• Improved user statistics which help understand server activity better and identify the source of the load
• VIRTUAL and PERSISTENT virtual columns
• Group commit in the Aria storage engine (the engine formerly known as the Maria engine)
• Pluggable authentication
• Segmented key cache for MyISAM to improve performance
• Two new storage engines: OQGRAPH and an interface to the full-text search engine Sphinx by way of SphinxSE. These are in addition to the new storage engines PBXT, FederatedX, XtraDB and Aria that were added in 5.1. Here is a list of all storage engines in MariaDB.

For fine-grained details, please see the changelogs for 5.2.3, 5.2.2, 5.2.1 and 5.2.0. For information about any of the features, and highlighted user enhancements above, please check the AskMonty Knowledgebase for articles and other resources.

MariaDB is available in source and binary form for a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, CentOS 5, and Solaris x86. These are available from the download page.

Enjoy!