Oracle has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5, which provides significant performance improvements over previous versions. New features in MySQL 5.5 include enhanced InnoDB performance, improved scalability, faster crash recovery times, and advanced replication capabilities such as semisynchronous replication and replication heartbeat. Benchmark results show that MySQL 5.5 provides up to a 1560% performance gain over MySQL 5.1.50 for certain workloads.