Oracle’s unrelenting pursuit to provide innovations to MySQL users has spurred another enhancement, this time targeting scalability and new performance via MySQL 5.5. This new version of open source database was released today targets Windows market and hopefully replace Microsoft SQL Server.

Following the big announcement, Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect relates the goal they have in mind when they pushed for this project. He said, “The latest release of MySQL further exemplifies Oracle’s commitment to the MySQL community and investment in delivering rapid innovation and enhancements to the MySQL platform. With MySQL 5.5, end users and ISVs have a high performance, reliable, scalable and cost-effective alternative to Microsoft SQL Server for building and deploying their business critical web and embedded applications.”

MySQL 5.5 is expected to deliver significant upgrades that will enable users to improve the performance and scalability of various web applications across multiple operating systems like Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, and Mac OS X. With MySQL 5.5 users will benefit as MySQL database and InnoDB storage engine have also been improved and is now more capable of providing optimum performance and scalability when running on the most up-to-date multi-CPU and multi-core hardware and operating systems. Additionally, with new release 5.5, InnoDB is now the default storage engine for the MySQL Database that will deliver ACID transactions, referential integrity and crash recovery.

Meanwhile, Monica Kumar, Oracle senior director of product marketing mentioned that the organization will continue to exploit the potential of MySQL. She says, “We are investing a lot of resources into MySQL, and I would like to have people actually look at the work we’ve done and not just say things based on preconceived notions.”