It’s time to continue our series on the transactional storage engines for MySQL. Some might question why I even include Falcon because it is very much beta at this time. MySQL, however, has made quite an investment into Falcon, and while it is currently beta, the code is improving and it looks like that it will be production-worthy when MySQL server 6.0 hits GA.

If this is the case, it is important to begin to understand what Falcon was designed for and how it differs from other transactional engines such as InnoDB. I am going to concentrate quite a bit on the Falcon/InnoDB comparison as that is what everyone wants to talk about. This is despite my having heard MySQL employees repeatedly make statements to the effect of, “Falcon is not going to replace InnoDB,” or “Falcon is not competing with InnoDB.” Well, take that with a grain of salt. It certainly seems to me that they are competing for the same spot.

Warning

As I said, Falcon is beta. First off, don’t even try to use it in production. Using it in production means you will also be using MySQL Server 6.0, which itself is considered alpha. Your data will explode, be corrupted, or eaten by jackals. It won’t be pretty. It will cause great pain.

In addition, the features of Falcon are still changing. What I say here might or might not be accurate in the future.

End of Warning

So, why was Falcon even created?

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