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New features in MariaDB 10.3

Mature

Article from ADMIN 49/2019

By Oliver Sennhauser

What lacked maturity in MariaDB 10.2 has now been sorted out in version 10.3. We look at the benefits you can reap now.

If you want to install a MySQL database on a modern Linux distribution, in more than half of the cases you are likely to opt for MariaDB. CentOS no longer offers the mysql-server package and installs mariadb-server instead. Debian ships with MariaDB 10.1, and only Ubuntu still uses an original MySQL 5.7.

If you don't believe me, try this test:

SQL> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES WHERE Variable_name IN ('version','version_comment');
+-----------------+----------------+
| Variable_name   | Value          |
+-----------------+----------------+
| version         | 10.3.9-MariaDB |
| version_comment | MariaDB Server |
+---------------+------------------+

MariaDB is designed to be a drop-in replacement for MySQL (see the box "The Story So Far"), which from a technical perspective means that you would stop the database server, replace the binaries, and restart the database server. Done! Whether this will work in reality is a different matter, but I'll consider just one thing at a time.

The Story So Far

In 2008, MySQL was purchased by Sun Microsystems; just a year later, Sun was acquired by Oracle. This development did not suit the founder of MySQL, Monty Widenius, and he founded a new company named MariaDB, in which he continued a fork of MySQL with a few former MySQL developers. This happened at version 5.5, and at the time, you could still confidently speak of a MariaDB drop-in replacement.

As time went by and new features were added, MariaDB and MySQL began to diverge. Almost imperceptibly the wording changed from "drop-in-replacement" to "compatible," and today, the two databases are not even 100% compatible anymore. When it comes to switching, you need to be on your toes!

MariaDB v5.5 was followed by version 10.0. This version leap should have made it clear that MariaDB

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