MariaDB was started in early 2009 as a branch of MySQL (called MariaDB for trademark reasons). MariaDB has an open development model where the entire Open Source community around it can participate, in contrast to MySQL whose development is tightly controlled by Sun Microsystems (and formerly MySQL AB). MariaDB thus provides a variant of MySQL under the GPL with extra bugfixes and features for those that need more than what the "standard" MySQL has to offer.
MariaDB is based on the same codebase as MySQL and provides full backwards compatibility, and new MySQL releases are merged into MariaDB. MariaDB can thus be used as a plug-in replacement for MySQL (and conversely MySQL can replace MariaDB unless one uses new features unique to MariaDB).
This talk will give a general overview of the MariaDB project, including:
- What are the new features in MariaDB? Storage engines, patches, features, bug fixes, and packages.
- How to use MariaDB.
- Why would one use MariaDB (and conversely why would one use MySQL instead)?
- How to get involved in MariaDB.
Kristian Nielsen has been working with Open Source since around 1991, authoring and contributing to many different projects. He worked as a MySQL server developer for 2 1/2 years, and for the past year has been working on MariaDB as a developer at Monty Program AB.