The following changelog shows what has already been done in the 5.0 tree:

• Basic support for stored procedures (SQL-99 style).
• Added SELECT INTO list_of_vars, which can be of mixed, that is, global and local type.
• Removed the update log. It is fully replaced by the binary log. If the MySQL server is started with --log-update, it will be translated to --log-bin (or ignored if the server is explicitly started with --log-bin), and a warning message will be written to the error log. Setting SQL_LOG_UPDATE will silently set SQL_LOG_BIN instead (or do nothing if the server is explicitly started with --log-bin).
• User variable names are now case insensitive: if you do SET @a=10; then SELECT @A; will now return 10. Of course, the content of the variable is still case sensitive; only the name of this variable is case insensitive.