[development] Drop MySQL 3 support

[Larry Garfield]

On Fri, July 14, 2006 11:06 am, Gerhard Killesreiter said:
> Hi there!
>
> MySQL AB (the company behind our most used database) has announced a
> change in support options for their database products.
>
> http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/mysql_lifecycle_policy.pdf
>
> According to this document, the active support for MySQL 3.23 will end
> at the last of this month (ie on two weeks) and the extended support
> will end on the end of this year.
>
> I therefore propose that we formally drop support of MySQL 3 as of
> Drupal 4.8 which will appear later this year.
>
> MySQl 4.0's active support will end the last of September, we could
> consider dropping support for it too. Extended support will run until
> the end of 2008.
>
> Dropping both MySQL 3 and 4.0 would enable us to rewrite some parts of
> our SQL queries. The extend of this would need to be researched.
>
> I know that people will argue with "but there are so many ISPs that
> still run 3.23". ISPs that still run 3.23 after it has been retired by
> the supporting company are probably not worth the money you them.
>
> Cheers,
> 	Gerhard

+1 on dropping MySQL 3.x.  It's about as outdated now as PHP 3 is.

However, 4.0 is still in active use.  The web host that my company does
nearly all its hosting through is using 4.0 still, much to my dismay.  (We
don't do Drupal work, but it is a non-small host.  FutureQuest.)

While I'd love to be able to use MySQL 4.1 features (subselects are the
first thing that come to mind), I don't know if the market penetration for
4.0 is low enough yet that we can get away with it.  We support PHP back
to 4.3.6, even though that's several years old and 4.3.10 is the minimum
I'd recommend for anyone these days, if not 4.4.

Does anyone have any decent numbers on MySQL's 4.0's active use?

--Larry Garfield