New version and a new home for PBXT!

I have just released the first fully durable version of PBXT. Because of the amount of new code I have reverted PBXT to Alpha status. This version, 1.0-alpha, can be downloaded from: http://www.primebase.org/download.

Oh, which reminds me: PBXT now has a new home at http://www.primebase.org, so take a look around! I have actually found a bit of time to write some documentation. Right now the documentation describes building, installation, and the PBXT system parameters. Future additions will include information on performance tuning and a road map for PBXT development.

But there is more to the new home than just a new web-site. The PBXT project is now owned and funded by PrimeBase Technologies, an open source software development company. So altogether this is a important step forward on the road to my goal which is to make PBXT a significant contribution to the MySQL community and business/eco-system.

Besides full durability, the latest release includes the following improvements:

• Calculation of index statistics as required by the optimizer (execute FLUSH TABLES to refresh the statistics).
• New system variables: pbxt_log_cache_size, pbxt_log_file_threshold, pbxt_transaction_buffer_size and pbxt_checkpoint_frequency (details here).
  
• Implementation of SELECT FOR UPDATE, which performs row-level locking to prevent concurrent updates.
• Group commit: increases update throughput by committing multiple transactions concurrently.
• Support for SHOW ENGINE PBXT STATUS, which displays information about memory usage.

What this release does not have is an option to relax durability. The transaction log is always flushed on commit. I plan to add a system parameter shortly that will allow you, in the spirit of the original version, to trade performance for durability if this suites your application.

Even better would be to be able to specify this per table. Now if only MySQL would allow engines to specify custom table attributes...