Where did MySQLs pluggable architecture, which allows different database engines to be used, come from?
MM: It was a smart design decision by Monty back in ’95. He had built the first MySQL engine. He realised he needed to revise and upgrade the storage engine. But he was lazy, so he didn’t want to move over abruptly from one to the other. So he thought, what if I allow both of those to coexist at the same time? And when he did that, he had to create an API between the upper layer and the lower level. He didn’t know at the time what a fantastic design decision it was. In Web 2.0, the usage of data is much more varied today than it used to be in the old client-server world. If you have a big Web site, you have some data that is transactional, you have other data that is read-only but is needed in milliseconds, and then you have logging and archiving data that you typically don’t need [immediately] but which needs to be available somewhere. By using different storage engines, you can cater to those various needs within the same database installation. GM: What was the thinking behind your d
