Falcon (storage engine)

Falcon

Original author(s)	Jim Starkey
Developer(s)	Sun Microsystems
Preview release	MySQL 6.0.9 / January 10, 2009; 2 years ago (2009-01-10)
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Database engine
License	GNU General Public License
Website	http://www.mysql.com/mysql60/

Falcon was^[1] a transactional storage engine being developed for the MySQL relational database management system. Development was stopped after Oracle purchased MySQL.^[2] It was based on the Netfrastructure database engine. Falcon was designed to take advantage of Sun's zfs file system.

Architecture analysis showed an interesting mixture of possible performance properties, while low level benchmarks on the first alpha release in 5.1.14-falcon showed that Falcon performed differently from both InnoDB and MyISAM. It did better in several tests^{[citation needed]}, worse in others, with inefficient support for the MySQL LIMIT operation a limitation. Its biggest advantage though is known to be ease of use; Falcon requires minimum maintenance and designed to reconfigure itself automatically to handle all types of loads efficiently.

See also

Free software portal

• InnoDB
• MyISAM
• ISAM

References

1. ^ http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Database/Oracle-Discusses-MySQL-Database-Plans-854185/
2. ^ http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3876206/Oracle-Commits-to-MySQL-with-InnoDB.htm

External links

• Text summary of Starkey's presentation
• Slashdot news item of the open source announcement
• InnoDB vs MyISAM vs Falcon
• Falcon Design Review
• Understanding the Falcon Transaction Storage Engine - Part 1
• Understanding the Falcon Transaction Storage Engine - Part 2
• Understanding the Falcon Transaction Storage Engine - Part 3