MySQL 5.1 GA is of good quality

Hi,

Been a while since I lasted posted.

It has been a busy year with testing on 5.1, 5.1 Replication, the Telco branches of cluster and doing test Automation.

I know many have read the post that one of the founders did about MySQL 5.1 GA and the known issues with it. I as QA wanted to extend my take.

I started working for MySQL back in April of 2005. Official QA had only been around since Feb of 2005 and I think I was the 3rd or 4th brought in. My position at another DB software provider had gone to India which allowed me to find this opportunity.

When I first started, there were not many things in place for QAing the product and very limited automation. Even so, finding bugs was like shooting fish in a barrel with and over sized shotgun.

In fact, I spent more time writing bug reports then I did testing. There was a lot of low hanging fruit. Some the size of cherries and some the size of watermelons.

MySQL 5.0 was already behind and had many known and unknown issues.

Before the official start of QA inside MySQL, testing was left up to developers and community to find issues. It was much easier to ship with no known issues as that is just what they were, not known. This is not to say they did not exist in those versions, just that no one had found them.

Fast forward to today, QA is in place and detailed testing is being done

We have system, stress, load, performance, regression, unit, etc... testing that happening each and every day. In addition, there is better automated testing in place. Due to this most of all, if not all, the low hanging fruit has been picked.

I now spend more time testing and developing tests/automation then I do writing bug reports.

I know that 5.1 is a much better release then 5.0 was by far. Are there still bugs? Sure, but many are known and listed for anyone to review. I know of no software company (closed or open source) that ships and guarantees no bugs.

5.1 has had thousands of bugs found and fixed before it ever received the GA title. It has many wonderful features that many have been waiting on GA so that could officially use it in production. (i.e. Row Based Replication).

So if you are holding off looking at or trying MySQL 5.1 because of a naysayer, I would encourage you to try it, see for yourself and makeup your own mind.

As always, I am open to better ways to test our product. Feel free to email me and let me know your thoughts.

/Jeb