>Great news!
>MySQL 3.23 will have transaction support using the Berkeley DB!
>It is in beta right now (3.23.24).
>
>And the first packaged open source database product, NuSphere, has just been released! It is based on MySQL, and runs on Linux, Unix, and Windows! NuSphere MySQL is an integrated distribution of Apache, Perl, PHP, and MySQL.
>
>www.nusphere.com

Wow! That's amounts to a total rewrite of MySQL, which is something the authors said they would probably never do. I would attribtue their cahnge of heart to the competition they are feeling from PostgreSQL, which is object orientated including inheritance, has TT, checkpoints and all the other goodies.

With small table sizes MySQL is faster than PostgreSQL but when the number of records approaches 100,000 PostgreSQL takes the lead.
I didn't go with MySQL because it doesn't (didn't) support true foreign keys, true indexing, grant, and a ton of other necessary DB manipulation abilities. They have stubs for compatibilty, but the stubs don't do anything except avoid throwing an exception. But, MySQL is small and fast for small databases.