MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.3.0 alpha has been released

[Kent Boortz]

Dear MySQL users,

MySQL Connector/ODBC 5.3.0 alpha, a new version of the ODBC driver for
the MySQL database management system, has been released.

The available downloads include both a Unicode driver and an ANSI
driver within the same package. Server-side prepared statements are
enabled by default. It is suitable for use with any MySQL version
since 4.1 (It will not work with 4.0 or earlier releases.)

This is first MySQL ODBC driver conforming to the ODBC 3.8
specification. We did the minimally required implementation of the
standard with key 3.8 feature, in this release being output stream
parameters supported for binary types only.

Also Connector/ODBC 5.3 introduces a GTK+-based setup library
providing GUI DSN setup dialog on some Unix based systems, currently
included in the Oracle Linux 6 and Debian 6 binary packages. Other new
features in the 5.3 driver are FileDSN and Bookmarks support.

Keep in mind that this is a alpha release, and as with any other
pre-production release, caution should be taken when installing on
production level systems or systems with critical data. Not all of
the features planned for the final Connector/ODBC 5.3 release are
implemented.

The release is now available in source and binary form for a number of
platforms from our download pages at

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/5.3.html

For information on installing, please see the documentation at

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/connector-odbc-installation.html

Enjoy!

The MySQL Connectors team at Oracle

==============================================================================

Functionality added or changed, and bugs fixed:

  * Support for File Data Sources. (WL#6583, Bug# 11746219/24581)

  * Bookmark support added in myodbc (WL#7039)

  * Added new variable in cmake config files ODBCCP32_LIB for
    odbccpp32.lib path, and MYSQLCLIENT_LIB_NAME for linking
    mysqlclient statically or dynamically by
    specifying mysqlclient library (libmysql.*, mysqlclient.*,
    libmysqlclient_r.*, libmysqlclient.*) to be used. Mysql CPP
    linkage for mysql version >= 5.6.4 (wl#6738)

  * Added a new test module for crash bugs (my_crash.c)

  * Added GUI dialog for Linux

  * Support of ODBC 3.8 standard - driver self identification,
    input/output stream parameters (WL#6584)

Bugs fixed:

  * With utf8 byte string for mysql server version < 5.5.3, insert fails
    with error message "Server does not support 4-byte encoded UTF8
    characters." (Bug# 14838690)


  * Driver use the char ';' as separator in attributes string instead
    of the '\0' (Bug# 15940689/66548)

  * DSN connection parameters override those specified in the
    connection string (Bug# 11760574/52996)

  * Non-compliant behavior of SQLMoreResults (Bug# 16101282/67920)

  * MSSQL linked server connected to MySQL 5.1.9 driver causes hard
    crash (Bug# 16604346/63386)

  * MySQL ODBC drivers incorrectly returns TIME columns, where
    value > '99:59:59' (Bug# 16176981/67793)

  * Conversion of Time field data to Timestamp type may produce
    incorrect result (Bug# 17016839/69545)

  * Need to add a lock to access connections member in ENV structure
    (Bug# 17240611/69864)

  * Visual Studio 2010 crashes when reading rows from any table in
    Server Explorer (Bug# 17304031/69950)

  * Corrected MYSQL_NUM_VERSION calculation error in FindMysql.cmake.
    MYSQL_LIB_DIR, MYSQL_INCLUDE_DIR, MYSQL_LINK_FLAGS and
    MYSQL_CXXFLAGS will be obtained from mysql_config only when
    they are not provided using cmake options.

  * Memory leak in SQLPrepare with queries that use parameters
    (Bug# 17400483/70113)

  * Valgrind error, simple loop fix (Bug# 17397596/64105)

  * Wrong pointer type can cause crash in convert_c_type2str()
    (Bug# 17421620/69733)

  * Memory leak in SQLMoreResults() as deallocation of
    result_bind buffer required before calling mysql_stmt_free_result()
    (Bug# 17441296)

  * FileDSN is created even if the connection credentials are wrong
    (Bug# 17508006)

  * Error with iodbc in SQLAllocHandle with handle type SQL_HANDLE_DBC
    as odbc_ver is unset.

Built against the MySQL server 5.6.14 client library.