NuoDB is a completely new database system written from the ground up to exploit distributed shared-nothing architectures. NuoDB's "Emergent" architecture is the opposite of the monolithic approaches to SQL/ACID relational database systems that have dominated the last 3 decades. In NuoDB it is the aggregate effect of many nodes that electively opt-in and contribute to the system that results in it being a SQL/ACID database. It behaves like a flock of birds that fly in an organized fashion but without a central point of control or a single point of failure.
The product is not offered as a MySQL storage engine, partly because the MySQL storage engine API is a table-level API and does not allow the flexibility that a database system needs to do what NuoDB does. You can see a good video overview of the product at http://www.nuodb.com/blog.
On availability and pricing:
The product is designed specifically for web scale applications, supports PHP, Ruby, Hibernate and the usual range of SQL tools/APIs, and runs either on your own hardware or on public clouds.
NuoDB is in late Beta (Beta 6 is due in the next few weeks) with about 250 customers. The product is due to ship in the Spring.
Pricing depends on whether you download it or run it on public clouds. For download it will be free forever for small installations, and will have a subscription fee as you scale out. On public clouds it will be based on the pay-per-use model of the cloud.
Disclaimer: I am the CEO of NuoDB Inc
To expand on @MitchWheat's answer (+1 for directly answering first):
ANALYZE TABLE examines key distribution and stores them in INFORMATION_SCHEMA.STATISTICS.
OPTIMIZE TABLE performs ANALYZE TABLE after doing some table compression. The equivalent of OPTIMIZE TABLE mydb.mytable; if the table was MyISAM is this:
ALTER TABLE mydb.mytable ENGINE=MyISAM;
ANALYZE TABLE mydb.mytable;
MyISAM
For the MyISAM table mydb.mytable in datadir /var/lib/mysql, you have the following files:
/var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.frm/var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.MYD (data)/var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.MYI (indexes)
OPTIMIZE TABLE mydb.mytable would shrink the .MYD and .MYI files for the table.
This is not the same for InnoDB. Here is how it is different:
Each table's data and indexes are stored in an external tablespace file. For datadir is /var/lib/mysql and the table mydb.mytable, it would be stored as follows:
/var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.frm/var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.ibd
When OPTIMIZE TABLE mydb.mytable is executed, mytable.ibd gets shrunk.
Only /var/lib/mysql/mydb/mytable.frm would exist. All the data and index pages for the table mydb.mytable are stored in the system tablespace file /var/lib/mysql/ibdata1.
When OPTIMIZE TABLE mydb.mytable is executed, the data and index pages are written contiguously in ibdata1. Unfortunately, this make ibdata1 grow in leaps and bounds.
See the Pictorial Representation from Percona CTO Vadim Tkachenko
UPDATE 2013-02-26 22:33 EST
You comment was
I think, optimize table for innodb is not supported. I got a message, index will be recreated. How does it work?
I tried this out
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mysql> use test
Database changed
mysql> create table dat (a int, primary key (a));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)
mysql> insert into dat values (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10);
Query OK, 10 rows affected (0.04 sec)
Records: 10 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> analyze table dat;
+----------+---------+----------+----------+
| Table | Op | Msg_type | Msg_text |
+----------+---------+----------+----------+
| test.dat | analyze | status | OK |
+----------+---------+----------+----------+
1 row in set (0.06 sec)
mysql> optimize table dat;
+----------+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Table | Op | Msg_type | Msg_text |
+----------+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| test.dat | optimize | note | Table does not support optimize, doing recreate + analyze instead |
| test.dat | optimize | status | OK |
+----------+----------+----------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.14 sec)
mysql>
You are correct. You cannot run OPTIMIZE TABLE as a single operation. What InnoDB does instead is the following:
ALTER TABLE mydb.mytable ENGINE=InnoDB;
ANALYZE TABLE mydb.mytable;
You could also just run these steps yourself.
However, in all honesty, you should not have to run ANALYZE TABLE against an InnoDB table because each time a query is executed, the InnoDB Storage Engine performs an estimation on table cardinality based on passing through pages in the indexes. If there are a high number of INSERTs, UPDATEs, and DELETEs, then you will need to ANALYZE TABLE. When there is a high number of DELETEs, then ALTER TABLE mydb.mytable ENGINE=InnoDB; is needed to shrink the table.
I actually wrote posts about the futility of ANALYZE TABLE on InnoDB in certain instances:
Best Answer
The Cleartext Authentication Plugin, as you have pointed out, is included in all distributions, but it's not quite correct to that it "is applicable to all MySQL servers." Yes, it is, but actually, not really... because with Cleartext:
Okay, Oracle, which server-side plugins would those be?
The answer to that would appear to be "none of them," except, of course, the proprietary PAM plugin.
Of course, if you aren't using a plugin that needs it on the server-side, there's no reason you would use the cleartext plugin on the client side, and the only reason you'd need it on the server side would be because you were going to pass the credentials on to another system... like the PAM plugin does.
If you need the PAM authentication plugin's capabilities, the choices appear to be these: