MySQL 5.6 to ship in early 2013

MySQL 5.6 won't be delivered in time for the holidays but users can expect it early next year, one exec said today. 

During a webcast on the forthcoming MySQL upgrade, MySQL product lead Rob Young identified a host of performance and availability improvements in the imminent 5.6 release and hinted at some other new features upcoming in 2013.

The release candidate was made available in September. 

"5.6 is quickly approaching general availability release and a product ready release [will come]in early 2013," Young said at the end of his hour-long webcast today.

"Beyond that," Oracle is working on numerous new features and enhancements -- such as a pluggable interface and more NoSQL options -- that will make MySQL an ideal choice for web, cloud-based and embedded use cases, whether on premise or hosted, he said.

Oracle is simplifying the architeture and trying to remove more operating system and file system "artifacts," he added.

MySQL will continue to be offered as open source under the GPL, he said. Oracle offers a free community edition and a supported commercial edition.

The news comes just days after rivals backing a fork of MySQL known as MariaDB formed a foundation to formally challenge Oracle's MySQL. MariaDB was launched by the founder of MySQL, Monty Widenius, after Sun purchased MySQL for $1 billion in 2008.