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My SQL releases early Falcon database engine late

Martin LaMonica Former Staff writer, CNET News
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer covering green tech and cutting-edge technologies. He joined CNET in 2002 to cover enterprise IT and Web development and was previously executive editor of IT publication InfoWorld.
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Martin LaMonica

Open-source database company MySQL released an alpha version of its homegrown database engine, code-named Falcon, later than originally planned.

The engine is designed for high-volume Web applications with support for traditional database functions like transactions, according to the company.

The Falcon engine came to MySQL through its acquisition of small database consulting company Netfrastructure, which employs database luminary Jim Starkey.

Having its own database engine is significant move for MySQL. In 2005, database giant Oracle purchased a small company called Innobase which supplies a popular transactional storage engine for MySQL.

Last April, MySQL had projected the Falcon engine would go into beta last summer and be generally available by the end of 2006.

The current version of Falcon works with version 5.1 of the MySQL database and runs on 32-bit Windows and 32-bit or 64-bit Linux. The company intends to add support for other operating systems after the alpha release.