Oracle has introduced JavaScript support in the MySQL database, allowing developers to write JavaScript stored programs, i.e. JavaScript functions and procedures, in the MySQL database server.

The capability was announced on December 15, 2023. The JavaScript stored programs will be run with the GraalVM, which provides an ECMAScript-compliant runtime to execute JavaScript programs. Developers can access this MySQL-JavaScript capability in a preview in MySQL Enterprise Edition, which can be downloaded via Oracle Technology Network (OTN). MySQL-JavaScript also is offered in the MySQL Heatwave cloud service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), AWS, and Microsoft Azure.

Oracle said that JavaScript provides a simple syntax, support for modern language features, and a rich ecosystem of reusable code modules, while open source MySQL will be a “natural choice” of database for JavaScript developers. Support for JavaScript stored programs will improve MySQL developer productivity by leveraging an ecosystem with more developers able to write stored programs. These programs offer an advantage by minimizing data movement between the database server and applications.

MySQL-JavaScript unlocks opportunities in application design that once were constrained by a tradeoff, Oracle said. JavaScript stored programs let developers sidestep data movement and implement advanced data processing logic inside the database. Oracle cited use cases such as data extraction, data formatting, data validation, data compression and encoding, and data transformation, such as converting a column of strings into a sparse-matrix representation.