As is usually the case with fresh versions of software, we advise clients to move forward judiciously.
This release has a bit of a hubbub surrounding it on the internet regarding Monty Widenius’ post titled “Oops we did it again“. Monty’s article is an excellent summary of what does and doesn’t work as well as putting in an obligatory (though oft forgotten) reminder to test everything in an environment that is as close to production as possible. He also touches on the politics of development at MySQL and wishes they’re closer to Drizzle or PostgreSQL. I don’t know about internal politics at MySQL (now SUN) but as a lurker on some of the Drizzle discussions, I have to say that it’s an amazing group that’s coalesced around a call for a lighter faster alternative based on MySQL.
Back to 5.1 generally, there are some bright spots and interesting features that will improve with additional dot releases and those of us who have been waiting for bug fixes now have MySQL 5.1 to look to as a fix option.