That would be a Microsoft-style release cycle… not an open source one!

In a few years I would expect MySQL to be fully enterprise-ready, with clustering/replication/etc, proxying, etc. all being easy to setup, configure and automate.

I think MySQL is so close on so many fronts already…

Absolutely. It is best if MySQL Replication would not break in case of power failure and have single command ways to resync slave from the master (or from the slave) if it out of sync for some reason. Until that is done however we have to relay on various scripts and tools and sometimes these tools require certain underlying functionality to do their job.

Google is working a lot with replication safety and deal between Google and MySQL may mean we will see results of those efforts in MySQL mainline in a few years.

I *believe* ibpool does this already (from what the docs say) - it does require some sort of proxy/middle layer to be able to mark servers offline/online, but it would allow a bunch of slaves to basically “subscribe” to the master at any point in time and “catch up” as fast as it can, and once it is caught up, mark itself as open for business.

I think it is close to being there, with tools such as maatkit, ibpool, people’s custom scripts, and replication enhancements. It would be nice to see MySQL actually just build this in so we don’t need those custom things anymore and can rely on MySQL itself to sync itself… that’s been my biggest fear and the reason I have not adopted it yet. Once a slave is out of sync, I have to take the master down, or put it in read-only until the slave catches up…

Help me Obiwan, you’re my only hope!