It seems like it's the year of MySQL replacements - and I'm not talking crazy NoSQL here, but straight drop-in alternatives.
Quite a few people have already mentioned MariaDB around here, but I've just heard of another one, which the hardcore database people at Hacker News seem to like.
So, anyone tried Percona? Apparently it has a significant number of performance improvements - sounds interesting. If no-one has, I may give it a test and see how it goes.
Percona is on my list of things to look into, as I've heard about quite a few major sites trialling it. Can't say the same for MariaDB.
Not a huge priority for me though as it's really a micro-optimisation, and much more significant gains can be made elsewhere.
Give Percona a try and let us see some benchmarks. About time someone did something like this, props man!
Percona is good if you can utilize their extended features and optimizations with extradb. If you are looking for a drop in replacement to vanilla mysql expecting a huge performance gain this is not your answer.
Percona does not play nice in RPM form with other software, it should be deployed by extremely technically savvy system admins and updated on a regular basis.
Snipe - right you are. I feel a MySQL replacement shootout test coming on...
Tyler - thanks, good tip. Do you know if the apt package suffers similar problems to the RPM?
I've been using Percona and have no complaints, but haven't noticed any staggering improvements.
I'd check out NuoDB if I were you, it looks pretty cool, and retains all ACID properties and adhoc query capabilities while maintaining scalability. Not sure if they support auto-sharding, though.
Forgot to mention, thanks for the recommendation, I have now implemented Percona on all of my servers.
Heh, and look at what just popped up today. Looks like Percona are testing a fix for the RPM problems:
YAY, maybe they will make their rpms actually compatible with other software.. lol