MySQL 5.6 RC: further thoughts and questions

Here are a few questions I came up with while experimenting with MySQL 5.6.7 & 5.6.8. They are the impressions of a first-time encounter with 5.6, which is a single opportunity for a person to point out the things that strike as odd.

Bugs-wise, just submitted another crashing bug for 5.6.8. I’m just one man, so I extrapolate to realize there is still much work to be done.

The below list does not necessarily make for a bug list; mostly things that puzzle me. I hope it can stir some additional thinking.

1. Transportable tablespace: what’s the difference between FLUSH TABLES my_table WITH READ LOCK and FLUSH TABLES my_table FOR EXPORT? Both create the .cfg file, and both seem to operate just as well. One document says READ LOCK, another says FOR EXPORT.
2. What’s the ALGORITHM=? flag in online ALTER TABLE? Apparently one can write to altered table even on ALGORITHM=COPY. There’s not enough documentation to explain.
3. How come there’s not a single example of online InnoDB DDL in official docs?
4. Why the inconsistency of putting ALGORITHM=…, LOCK=… in between commas, as opposed to other flags/commands not between commas? For example: ALTER TABLE my_table ADD COLUMN i INT, ALGORITHM=COPY, LOCK=SHARED, ENGINE=InnoDB ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=4
5. Why would anyone care about FULLTEXT search word proximity by bytes? Typically, one would want proximity by words. I can find the excuse for proximity by characters. By bytes? A user is not interested in the low level representation of the text!
6. Could we get a distinct tablespace for the mysql internal InnoDB tables? (I understand there’s a separate tablespace for UNDO logs)
7. Why the need to configure gtid_mode=ON as well as disable-gtid-unsafe-statements so as to enable GTID replication? If only the first is set, an error is produced upon CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_AUTO_POSITION=1
8. And when said error is produced, why does it not mention disable-gtid-unsafe-statements, and instead read out a cryptic message? Also note this post by Giuseppe Maxia.