What's the difference between MySQL 5.7 and MySQL 8?

Question

What's the difference between MySQL 5.7 and MySQL 8?

Answer

.TRG, .FRM, .TRN and .PAR files no longer exist in MySQL 8 as Oracle changed how they handle physical files. Within MySQL 8.0, the data dictionary has changed to include a transactional data dictionary that can store data about database objects. Some new features include CTE (Common Table Expressions), regexp, windows functions, and even Invisible Indexes. Regarding regex (regular expressions), Unicode support is now available. There are some new security enhancements such as caching_sha2_password replacing mysql_native_password as the default authentication method.

MySQL 8.0 should perform better and more efficiently during benchmarking. It performs very well for read/write Workload versus MySQL 5.7. There's no reason not to use MySQL 8.0 if you can upgrade.

Please see the following documentation for an in-depth look into MySQL 8.0.

MySQL 8.0 Reference Manual