MySQL 9.7 is the first LTS release in the 9.x line. Its vector support is still all show, its years-late optimizer is disabled by default, and three years of Innovation Releases have produced remarkably little.
AI is becoming the story companies tell when they lay people off, but total demand for software engineering has not disappeared. It is spreading across the wider economy, driven by second-order demand unleashed as barriers fall.
The cost-cutting imperative has triggered a reevaluation of all technologies, including databases. This series critiques hot DB technologies and poses fundamental questions about their trade-offs: Are cloud databases, distributed databases, microservices, and containerization real needs or false hype?
