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3 days ago
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Users have six months to migrate from MySQL 8.0 if they are to stay on a supported version of the open source database, or face security and reliability risks.
Percona, a provider of open source database support services and Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), has warned that more than half its MySQL instances remain on MySQL 8.0, support for which ends on April 30, 2026.
Peter Zaitsev, Percona co-founder, told The Register: "Every piece of complex software has bugs which may not have been found yet. Some of those bugs are also security bugs. These are the most problematic: when you have software which is not supported, not maintained, that means those bugs are not going to be fixed anymore."
Data from PMM, Percona's open source database management tool, shows that 58 percent of MySQL and MariaDB (a MySQL fork) instances are running MySQL 8.0, while 18.8 percent are running 5.7, which went out of support in 2023.
While users might put off database migration because of the disruption involved, they should be aware that the upgrade from MySQL 8.0 to 8.4 – the most recent stable version – is not nearly so onerous as the upgrade from 5.7 to 8.0. "It was a very big and painful jump," Zaitsev told us.
MySQL has seen its popularity suffer in recent years, with its rating on the logarithmic DB-Engines scale falling off such that PostgreSQL may overtake it in the not-too-distant future, although it remains second to Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server is third, and like MySQL its popularity is also declining. On the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, MySQL remains in second place, used by around 40 percent of professional developers, a long way behind PostgreSQL, which is used by 55 percent.
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Sun Microsystems bought MySQL in 2008, and Oracle absorbed both the following year. Despite being seen as a reasonable custodian of the open source database, which was a pillar of the popular LAMP stack through the 2000s, more recently Oracle's long-term dedication to the system was questioned as it focuses on analytics DBaaS HeatWave, which is based on MySQL.
In September, Oracle was reported to have made widespread layoffs in the MySQL engineering team. Big Red declined to comment at the time.
"Is Oracle saying they are reducing investment in open source MySQL, reducing features and so on? I think that has been escalating. It has been really brutal. I spoke to a number of people who had left the company, and some of them estimated as many as 60 or 70 percent of the engineering team has gone," Zaitsev claimed.
While users might consider migrating to MariaDB, which was forked from MySQL in 2009, or PostgreSQL, there is a migration cost. "The difference between MariaDB and MySQL 8.0 is much more significant than 8.0 and 8.4, so you should prepare for more work," Zaitsev said. ®
