Oracle today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.7, the latest version of the world’s most popular open source database. The new version delivers greater performance, scalability and manageability, plus enhanced NoSQL capabilities with JSON support and MySQL Router, which makes it easy to connect applications to multiple MySQL databases.

“MySQL 5.7 delivers a wide range of innovations allowing developers, database administrators and DevOps teams to build and manage next-generation Web and cloud-based applications capable of processing ever increasing volumes of data,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president, MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “MySQL 5.7 builds upon Development Milestone Releases that have enabled users to preview, test and provide feedback during the development process – and as a result, this release has been a collaborative process involving many members of the MySQL community.”

Ulin will provide an overview of what’s new in MySQL 5.7 during the upcoming MySQL Central @ OpenWorld “State of the Dolphin” address in San Francisco on Monday, October 26 at 4.00 pm. Additionally, a webcast will be held on November 11, 2015, at 9.00 a.m. US Pacific Time.

“Booking.com’s initial testing of the Development Milestone Releases has shown promising improvements that will enable us to perform online configuration and schema changes with less downtime,” said Nicolai Plum, senior systems architect, Booking.com. “The multi-source and parallel replication improvements in MySQL 5.7 GA will help us to continue scaling our global e-commerce business with ease and we look forward to deploying it soon.”

Key enhancements in MySQL 5.7, which deliver greater performance and scalability, include:

• Enhanced Speed: In benchmark tests using SysBench Read-only Point-Selects, at 1,024 connections, MySQL 5.7 delivered 1,600,000 queries per second (QPS) — 3x faster than MySQL 5.6.
• Optimized InnoDB: New capabilities include increased performance and concurrency, enhanced on-line operations, spatial indexes, native partitioning and more.
• More Robust Replication: Enhancements to MySQL’s replication features include multi-source replication, enhanced Global Transaction Identifiers (GTIDs), and improved multi-threaded slaves for better scalability and availability.
• Enhanced Optimizer: A new MySQL optimizer dynamic cost model provides better query performance and greater user control.

Primary manageability enhancements within MySQL 5.7 include:

• New Native JSON Data Type and JSON Functions: Allows for efficient and flexible storage, search and manipulation of schema-less data. Enhancements include a new internal binary format, support for easy integration within SQL, and index management on the JSON Documents using generated columns.
• Performance Schema: Enables instrumentation for memory, transactions, stored routines, prepared statements, replication and locks.
• MySQL SYS Schema: Provides helper objects that answer common performance, health, usage and monitoring questions.
• Improved Security: Delivers easier and safer instance initialization, setup and management.
• Expanded Geographic Information System (GIS) Support for Mobile Applications: Provides spatial index support in InnoDB, GeoJSON and GeoHash support.

Also now generally available is the new MySQL Router, which simplifies application development by intelligently routing queries to MySQL databases for increased performance and uptime. MySQL Router also provides cross-language support for MySQL Fabric, making it simpler to manage groups of MySQL databases and delivering both high availability and scalability through automated data sharding.

For early testing and feedback, MySQL Group Replication is available at mysql.com. Group Replication delivers active/active write-anywhere replication clusters to MySQL, with support for automatic conflict detection and resolution.

MySQL 5.7 is scheduled to be available for download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ on October 26, 2015. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.