Percona has improved the MySQL database server and has a significant improvement in functionality and performance over MySQL. This release improves the performance of InnoDB in high load situations, provides some very useful performance diagnostic tools for DBAs, and additional parameters and commands to control server behavior.
The Percona server contains only the MySQL server version and does not provide a corresponding improvement to MySQL's Connector and GUI tools.
Percona Server uses some google-mysql-tools, Proven scaling, and Open Query to transform MySQL.
New features for this release include:
Percona Server 5.1.49-rel11.3 is based on MySQL 5.1.49.
The new variable parameter innodb_use_sys_stats_table. If on, the table ' s statistics are stored statically in the internal table sys_stats. The table is populated with the ANALYZE Table command.
New Session variable: Innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit_session.
For more detailed information, see the release notes.
The latest version can be downloaded from the official website. http://www.percona.com/downloads/