Sphinx 0.9.9 branch is officially feature-frozen and
we are making 0.9.9-rc2 available. As those who’ve been following 0.9.x
releases should be accustomed to, despite a modest rc1 to rc2 tag change
it adds about 30 new features once again. (Wonder if we’ll be able to
break the spell in 1.x and be less greedy about the version increments.)

The ultimate new feature couple is
MySQL binary protocol and SphinxQL
query language. Meaning that searchd can now pretend it’s mysqld.
Meaning that you can use ye good olde mysql command-line client
to connect to searchd and fire your queries using regular SELECT syntax!
More details are available via that link above.

But wait, there’s more. We added ODBC support both on Windows and Linux
(through UnixODBC) so you now can connect directly to that Oracle or
MS SQL database. We added a bunch of performance counters, IMO they look
especially nice when viewed using SHOW STATUS via mysql client program.
Strict order operator (aaa << bbb) and field-start and field-end
keyword modifiers (^hello world$) were added to full-text query language.
GROUP BY now supports aggregate functions (AVG, MAX, MIN, and SUM),
accessible both through newly added
SphinxQL interface and
SetSelect() API call.

Other 20+ features are smaller and these 7 most major ones should be
enough to encourage you to get and try it
anyway. For the curious, 0.9.9-rc2 change log
lists them all along with the bug fixes.

How safe is it to upgrade? Generally, both API and indexes are backwards
compatible (for about 2 years now); early adopters roll out intermediate
non-public releases on production systems on a rather regular basis;
and we never publish releases with known major general issues. And 0.9.9-rc2
is no exception. Of course nobody (except Donald Knuth) can guarantee
that his software is absolutely bug free. But what we can guarantee
to our customers is that we’ll priority
fix all bugs that you can repeat. (The keyword here is “priority”
as we’re gradually fixing all the bugs reports we receive.)
So if you’re looking for safer production deployment of all the shiny new
features, consider support packages. They perfectly cover 0.9.9-rc2.

What’s next? We will be fixing issues discovered in rc2 for about
1-2 months from now on before announcing stable release – depending on
your feedback. Do send us some! In the meantime, the work on real
time updates is progressing, we’ll be showing those at MySQL UC 2009.
That said, next two planned releases are 0.9.9-release and 1.10.1-alpha,
with the one which is the le… the bigger of two goods coming out first.

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