It took what, five years to fix the glaring design flaw where you couldn't use NOW() as the default in a datetime field. Seriously, this was just fixed a few weeks ago after years of outrage over it, and it was fixed by an outsider: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=27645 Now we all get to wait for our hosts to update their MySQL installation, once the fix makes it into a release. How many more years will that be?

If it has any significant deficit, MySQL is not going to "catch up." I'm not necessarily agreeing with the article, but don't fool yourself.