To add a new engine, MySQL must be recompiled. The concept of compiling an application just to add a feature may seem odd to Windows developers, but in the UNIX world, it’s the norm.

When MySQL 5.5 switched its underlying storage engine MyISAM to another, InnoDB, it drew questions and created some confusion about the foundation of this database. Certainly, the choice of a storage ...

Oracle has purchased InnoDB, a Finnish open-source database company whose add-on table storage engine for MySQL rivals MySQL's own MyISAM in popularity.