There has been much fan fare with the release of 5.x and it's support for Stored Procedures and Triggers. The problem is that in this area MySQL has some difficult acts to follow in procedural extensions such as PL/SQL and T-SQL.
In my opinion MySQL have concentrated too much on supporting ANSI standard, in the case of SQL thats fine as the standard is good enough but with regard to ANSI Procedural Extensions its fairly limited. This isn't helped but the limitations in Functions and Triggers with regards to not being able to access tables.
The problem is that the things that make PL/SQL and T-SQL great for programming is the additional features which are outside the ANSI standard. By restricting themselves to the standard I think MySQL have missed an opportunity.
In fairness it's an early release for such functionality but thats not consolation to people who are waiting to use it.
Don't get me wrong I'm not saying they are a wate of time but, the very people MySQL have included procedural extensions for (current Database Developers) will be a little disappointed with the early release, this may only further reinforce any view they have of MySQL.
Andrew Gilfrin
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http://gilfster.blogspot.com
My MySQL related Blog
http://www.mysqldevelopment.com
MySQL Stored Procedure,Trigger, View.... (Just about most things these days) Information