Added --tmpdir option to mysqld, for specifying the location of the temporary file directory.

MySQL now automatically changes a query from an ODBC client:

SELECT ... FROM table WHERE auto_increment_column IS NULL

to:

SELECT ... FROM table WHERE auto_increment_column == LAST_INSERT_ID()

This allows some ODBC programs (Delphi, Access) to retrieve the newly inserted row to fetch the AUTO_INCREMENT id.

DROP TABLE now waits for all users to free a table before deleting it.

Fixed small memory leak in the new connect protocol.

New functions BIN(), OCT(), HEX() and CONV() for converting between different number bases.

Added function SUBSTRING() with 2 arguments.

If you created a table with a record length smaller than 5, you couldn't delete rows from the table.

Added optimization to remove const reference tables from ORDER BY and GROUP BY.

mysqld now automatically disables system locking on Linux and Windows, and for systems that use MIT-pthreads. You can force the use of locking with the --enable-external-locking option.

Added --console option to mysqld, to force a console window (for error messages) when using Windows.

Fixed table locks for Windows.

Allow ‘$’ in identifiers.

Changed name of user-specific configuration file from my.cnf to .my.cnf (Unix only).

Added DATE_ADD() and DATE_SUB() functions.