A lot has changed in the database market in the two years since the MySQL 5.5 release. For one, the rise in the popularity of NoSQL databases has escalated in recent years. The NoSQL trend is not one that Oracle is ignoring.
“SQL is a very flexible language that allows you to do a lot of things that are not possible through a direct NoSQL type approach,” Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL Engineering at Oracle told InternetNews. “So we’ve tried to join the best of both worlds with the full power of SQL to do complex queries and at the same time we’re introducing a NoSQL access type API.”
Oracle Releases Open Source MySQL 5.6 with NoSQL Features — DatabaseJournal.com
The NoSQL API will be available alongside traditional SQL access to the same database giving the admin a powerful option for data access without forgoing the existing code. It will be interesting to try this new feature and see what the community reaction is.