The latest avatar of the next version of the World’s Most Popular Database Mysql , MySQL v6.0 is slated to release.

The following features have been or are expected to be added to MySQL 6.0:

• The new Falcon transactional storage engine

• Optimizer enhancements for faster subqueries and joins, including batched index access of table rows for sequences of disjoint ranges by the MyISAM and InnoDB storage engines.

• RESET SLAVE no longer changes replication connection parameters; previously, it reset them to the values specified on the command line

• The syntax for the LOCK TABLES statement has been extended to support transactional table locks that do not commit transactions automatically. Following LOCK TABLES ... IN SHARE MODE or LOCK TABLES ... IN EXCLUSIVE MODE, you can access tables not mentioned in the LOCK TABLES statement. You can now also issue these extended LOCK TABLES statements many times in succession, adding additional tables to the locked set, and without unlocking any tables that were locked previously. When using LOCK TABLES with IN SHARE MODE or IN EXCLUSIVE MODE, tables are not unlocked until the transaction ends.

  The behavior of LOCK TABLES when not using IN SHARE MODE or IN EXCLUSIVE MODE remains unchanged.

• Enhancements to XML functionality, including a new LOAD XML statement
• Support for extended comments for tables, columns, and indexes.

For a full list of the new features and downloads check here http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/6.0/en/mysql-nutshell.html