7 ms·

MySQL vs. MariaDB: Reality Check

161 points by tpetry 9y ago

ourmandave 9y ago
Last sentence... We look forward to supporting your deployments of MySQL or MariaDB Server, whichever option is right for you! If you need assistance on migrations between servers, or further information, don’t hesitate to contact your friendly Percona sales associate.
- abiox 9y ago
  have you worked with percona before?
zzzeek 9y ago
who says MariaDB doesn't work with ProxySQL? Also, this statement is total BS: "The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, but the risk of moving out of MariaDB Server to MySQL is very prevalent." Here is the correct statement: "The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, and the risk of moving to MySQL server if you aren't using newer MariaDB features is also minimal." I switch between multiple versions of MySQL and MariaDB all day long. If you aren't using specific things like MySQL's JSON type or NDB storage engine or expecting CHECK constraints to enforce on MySQL (oddly omitted from this feature comparison!), there is nothing different at all from a developer point of view, beyond the default values of flags which honestly change more between MySQL releases than anything else. As the maintainer of SQLAlchemy I think MySQL more often makes backwards-incompatible changes more often than MariaDB, such as just from 5.7.19 to 5.7.20 they decided to change the name of "@tx_isolation" to "@transaction_isolation" (and no, "@transaction_isolation" is not in 5.7.19, they just changed the name on a point release) and start emitting a prominent, scary warning when you use @tx_isolation that is breaking people's CI builds - on a point release. The reason a vendor like Percona or a linux distro chooses to favor MySQL or MariaDB is mostly about that vendor's relationship with Oracle (or lack thereof) more than anything else. I'm stuck using both all the time but the MariaDB community certainly feels more accessible than trying to get through to people working at Oracle.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Are you sure that you actually installed mysql? A apt-get install mysql would install mariadb. It could be pretty difficult to get and install mysql. I recall times where you needed to go to the Oracle website and check some EULA manually before you could get a temporary download link. Quite a stand against automation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - matthewowen 9y ago
    Your question is whether the person who maintains SQLAlchemy knows how to install mysql?
    - user5994461 9y ago
      The forking war between mariadb and mysql does not mind who you are. It affects everyone.
      - praneshp 9y ago
        Your parent's point is that zzzeek' is highly likely to understand the difference. He is the maintainer of https://www.sqlalchemy.org/ https://www.sqlalchemy.org/
  - wolco 9y ago
    I think you are looking for apt-get install mysql-server
  - orf 9y ago
    docker run mysql -d
- aidos 9y ago
  Mike, given all your experience, do you have a preferred relational db? I'm assuming the answer is "it depends" but I feel like, say, MySQL and Postgres are fairly indentical in terms of usecase. I'm assuming you know pretty much every dark corner of the dbs you have engines for in sqla. It must be a little hard forever supporting strange breakages like your example above when it's a db you don't care for as much.
jrs95 9y ago
The JSON comparison seems a bit disenginous considering Maria has JSON specific functions but just not a JSON type Edit: nevermind, I was skimming and read that totally wrong, they're pretty explicit about that
- viraptor 9y ago
  That's literally what it says, doesn't it? "No JSON Data Type, 26 functions"
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
I wasn't aware the client connectors (like MySQL-python) I'm using with MariaDB everyday are not "official". I'm just using them as usual.
Yaa101 9y ago
My reality check was called Postgres some years ago...
- mrweasel 9y ago
  I pretty much agree, except for the cases where you need multi-master databases. In those cases MySQL/MariaDB is pretty much your only option, unless you can afford huge license fees.
tkyjonathan 9y ago
Lots of love for MariaDB in the comments here..
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  Tell me about it. It's almost as if it's a good product that works well for most people (myself included).
  - tkyjonathan 9y ago
    Not knocking the DB. I use it myself. Just noticing a trend.
beefsack 9y ago
There's no way you can trust this to be unbiased, and the same can be said about the MariaDB comment they're responding to but don't directly reference (I've been unable to find it.)
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  Indeed, parts of this come across as more of a knee-jerk rant than anything.
jpatokal 9y ago
This is a blog post on the official Percona blog by its "Chief Evangelist", and quite far from a neutral evaluation.
damm 9y ago
Most of the statements in here are biased by Percona's relationship with MySQL. I mean you could complain that it's a fork; but who are you to bitch it's free software. If you paid for MySQL enterprise and they forked to something else and your license is worthless then you have a case. So it's not MySQL 8.0 and it doesn't have the same features as MySQL; it's obvious that the developers of MariaDB don't have the same mindset (and possibly same user audience) as MySQL does. Lastly most people use MySQL because they don't know better. You read a book about LAMP and it tells you to install MySQL; you really didn't make a choice. Lots of applications depend on MySQL and don't work on $othersql so you get forced dependencies. You could say MySQL used their clout to try and force their world vision of dominance. This wouldn't be far from the truth.
Ologn 9y ago
> Linux distributions have chosen MariaDB Server... It is the “default” MySQL in many Linux distributions (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Debian). However, Ubuntu... I think this is a key point. The major Linux distros use mariadb. Ubuntu does not by default, but "apt-get install mariadb-server" will get it for you. Plus the creator of MySQL and much of the original MySQL team actively develops MariaDB.
beiller 9y ago
I have not read the article but let met give a reality check. Innovation has stopped around Mysql 5.0 which supported binary logs and multi master replication. What features have actually been developed after this version that is useful? Json?
- VintageCool 9y ago
  Multithreaded replication in 5.6, row based replication in 5.1, performance schema
- fipar 9y ago
  Binary logs were introduced on 3.23. I'm not sure what you mean by multi master replication. If it's support for a single replica to receive events from more than one master at the same time, that was introduced on 5.7 on MySQL while MariaDB introduced its own, different implementation before that, on 10.0.1. If it's the possibility of setting up two nodes as co masters in circular replication, you could do that on 3.23 too. A lot was done on MySQL after 5.0, like GTID, for example. You can see list of all that was introduced on 5.7 alone here: http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com
cwyers 9y ago
I see several comments here that accuse Percona of bias against Maria for commercial reasons. If you look at Percona's services: https://www.percona.com/services/support/support-tiers-mysql-mariadb https://www.percona.com/services/support/support-tiers-mysql... They will happily take your money to support MariaDB. Percona Toolkit and Percona XtraBackup both support MariaDB. I have no dog in this fight -- I've left MySQL behind years ago and don't really miss it. I've hired Percona to help with some urgent DB problems I couldn't solve on my own and I was pleased with their work, but I have no stake in standing up for them. But the idea that they have some vested interest in pushing for MySQL over MariaDB doesn't seem born out by what they're selling.
- damm 9y ago
  Percona will take your money and support just about anything. They have an excellent set of DBA's for consulting with customers That said their bias is clear. I'm sure they are not happy that the innodb plugin has the xtradb patches. Hard to sell your product when others have brought it into their product I guess
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mathnode 9y ago
The tire-fire of a relationship between MySQL vendors, is still very entertaining. I personally blame the use of GPL licensing. I hate to be yet another commentor that drops the “P”-word, so I will drop the “F”-word instead; the Freebsd licensing allows for a kind of community growth, collaboration and mind share the likes of which the MySQL forks could only dream of.
hennsen 9y ago
Oh, and we „accidentally“ forgot to mention in the introduction paragraph, that MariaDB is the „fork“ of the people who actually invented MySQL and made all that, including our own business, possible in the first place. A fork that‘s created because Oracle gives a shit about really open community development but pushes their secrecy and self centered view and processes into the open source world wherever they can for their own financial gain and nothing else. Just saying, cause to somebody not aware of history it might sound like there are some crazy open source folks making their own thing at mariadb. (And im only referring to the introduction, it might be better explained somewhere else in the text, but i didn’t see that browsing through)
r1ch 9y ago
I've been growing increasingly concerned by MariaDB bugs. The latest Debian versions from mariadb.org had annoying libmysqlclient symbol conflicts with Debian packages and it still isn't fixed in the latest stable release. I also recently found out that MariaDB still ships the query cache built in (which is now completely removed from MySQL) and even with query_cache_type = off, it somehow still enabled itself and is in a broken state that was causing simple SELECT statements to return empty results. This article is making me consider the switch to Percona Server quite seriously.
hugs 9y ago
What do people here think of the (BSL) Business Source License? The MariaDB folks are using it for their MaxScale product. The BSL is intended to be a sustainable way to pay for open source software development. (BSL's tl;dr is that it's a proprietary license that reverts to an open source license after a period of time.)
_ix 9y ago
OpenStack has been mentioned here a few times which caught my eye. Our DBA (is that still a thing most places?) has requested that we prefer Percona over MariaDB in future infrastructure roll outs. I'm currently wrestling with Percona and it seems to be a confusing mess to me. Admittedly, I'm only a casual database consumer, but I've never had problems like this with postgres ERROR! mysql pid file /run/mysqld/mysql.pid /var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid empty or not readable Installation has been a pain with conflicting/incompatible versions of galera. I just want a simple ha database; is that so much to ask for?
- fideloper 9y ago
  `I just want a simple ha database; is that so much to ask for?` Yep! HA (and related, CAP) necessarily comes with trade offs. Databases being our store where we expect ACID compliance adds an extra layer of needs that makes multi-master (and similar concepts) "hard AF".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

161 points by tpetry 9y ago

Last sentence... We look forward to supporting your deployments of MySQL or MariaDB Server, whichever option is right for you! If you need assistance on migrations between servers, or further information, don’t hesitate to contact your friendly Percona sales associate.

abiox 9y ago
have you worked with percona before?

zzzeek 9y ago

who says MariaDB doesn't work with ProxySQL? Also, this statement is total BS: "The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, but the risk of moving out of MariaDB Server to MySQL is very prevalent." Here is the correct statement: "The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, and the risk of moving to MySQL server if you aren't using newer MariaDB features is also minimal." I switch between multiple versions of MySQL and MariaDB all day long. If you aren't using specific things like MySQL's JSON type or NDB storage engine or expecting CHECK constraints to enforce on MySQL (oddly omitted from this feature comparison!), there is nothing different at all from a developer point of view, beyond the default values of flags which honestly change more between MySQL releases than anything else. As the maintainer of SQLAlchemy I think MySQL more often makes backwards-incompatible changes more often than MariaDB, such as just from 5.7.19 to 5.7.20 they decided to change the name of "@tx_isolation" to "@transaction_isolation" (and no, "@transaction_isolation" is not in 5.7.19, they just changed the name on a point release) and start emitting a prominent, scary warning when you use @tx_isolation that is breaking people's CI builds - on a point release. The reason a vendor like Percona or a linux distro chooses to favor MySQL or MariaDB is mostly about that vendor's relationship with Oracle (or lack thereof) more than anything else. I'm stuck using both all the time but the MariaDB community certainly feels more accessible than trying to get through to people working at Oracle.

user5994461 9y ago
Are you sure that you actually installed mysql? A apt-get install mysql would install mariadb. It could be pretty difficult to get and install mysql. I recall times where you needed to go to the Oracle website and check some EULA manually before you could get a temporary download link. Quite a stand against automation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewowen 9y ago
  Your question is whether the person who maintains SQLAlchemy knows how to install mysql?
  - user5994461 9y ago
    The forking war between mariadb and mysql does not mind who you are. It affects everyone.
    - praneshp 9y ago
      Your parent's point is that zzzeek' is highly likely to understand the difference. He is the maintainer of https://www.sqlalchemy.org/ https://www.sqlalchemy.org/
- wolco 9y ago
  I think you are looking for apt-get install mysql-server
- orf 9y ago
  docker run mysql -d
aidos 9y ago
Mike, given all your experience, do you have a preferred relational db? I'm assuming the answer is "it depends" but I feel like, say, MySQL and Postgres are fairly indentical in terms of usecase. I'm assuming you know pretty much every dark corner of the dbs you have engines for in sqla. It must be a little hard forever supporting strange breakages like your example above when it's a db you don't care for as much.

jrs95 9y ago

The JSON comparison seems a bit disenginous considering Maria has JSON specific functions but just not a JSON type Edit: nevermind, I was skimming and read that totally wrong, they're pretty explicit about that

viraptor 9y ago
That's literally what it says, doesn't it? "No JSON Data Type, 26 functions"

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

I wasn't aware the client connectors (like MySQL-python) I'm using with MariaDB everyday are not "official". I'm just using them as usual.

Yaa101 9y ago

My reality check was called Postgres some years ago...

mrweasel 9y ago
I pretty much agree, except for the cases where you need multi-master databases. In those cases MySQL/MariaDB is pretty much your only option, unless you can afford huge license fees.

tkyjonathan 9y ago

Lots of love for MariaDB in the comments here..

SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
Tell me about it. It's almost as if it's a good product that works well for most people (myself included).
- tkyjonathan 9y ago
  Not knocking the DB. I use it myself. Just noticing a trend.

beefsack 9y ago

There's no way you can trust this to be unbiased, and the same can be said about the MariaDB comment they're responding to but don't directly reference (I've been unable to find it.)

SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
Indeed, parts of this come across as more of a knee-jerk rant than anything.

jpatokal 9y ago

This is a blog post on the official Percona blog by its "Chief Evangelist", and quite far from a neutral evaluation.

damm 9y ago

Most of the statements in here are biased by Percona's relationship with MySQL. I mean you could complain that it's a fork; but who are you to bitch it's free software. If you paid for MySQL enterprise and they forked to something else and your license is worthless then you have a case. So it's not MySQL 8.0 and it doesn't have the same features as MySQL; it's obvious that the developers of MariaDB don't have the same mindset (and possibly same user audience) as MySQL does. Lastly most people use MySQL because they don't know better. You read a book about LAMP and it tells you to install MySQL; you really didn't make a choice. Lots of applications depend on MySQL and don't work on $othersql so you get forced dependencies. You could say MySQL used their clout to try and force their world vision of dominance. This wouldn't be far from the truth.

Ologn 9y ago

> Linux distributions have chosen MariaDB Server... It is the “default” MySQL in many Linux distributions (such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Debian). However, Ubuntu... I think this is a key point. The major Linux distros use mariadb. Ubuntu does not by default, but "apt-get install mariadb-server" will get it for you. Plus the creator of MySQL and much of the original MySQL team actively develops MariaDB.

beiller 9y ago

I have not read the article but let met give a reality check. Innovation has stopped around Mysql 5.0 which supported binary logs and multi master replication. What features have actually been developed after this version that is useful? Json?

VintageCool 9y ago
Multithreaded replication in 5.6, row based replication in 5.1, performance schema
fipar 9y ago
Binary logs were introduced on 3.23. I'm not sure what you mean by multi master replication. If it's support for a single replica to receive events from more than one master at the same time, that was introduced on 5.7 on MySQL while MariaDB introduced its own, different implementation before that, on 10.0.1. If it's the possibility of setting up two nodes as co masters in circular replication, you could do that on 3.23 too. A lot was done on MySQL after 5.0, like GTID, for example. You can see list of all that was introduced on 5.7 alone here: http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com

cwyers 9y ago

I see several comments here that accuse Percona of bias against Maria for commercial reasons. If you look at Percona's services: https://www.percona.com/services/support/support-tiers-mysql-mariadb https://www.percona.com/services/support/support-tiers-mysql... They will happily take your money to support MariaDB. Percona Toolkit and Percona XtraBackup both support MariaDB. I have no dog in this fight -- I've left MySQL behind years ago and don't really miss it. I've hired Percona to help with some urgent DB problems I couldn't solve on my own and I was pleased with their work, but I have no stake in standing up for them. But the idea that they have some vested interest in pushing for MySQL over MariaDB doesn't seem born out by what they're selling.

damm 9y ago
Percona will take your money and support just about anything. They have an excellent set of DBA's for consulting with customers That said their bias is clear. I'm sure they are not happy that the innodb plugin has the xtradb patches. Hard to sell your product when others have brought it into their product I guess

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mathnode 9y ago

The tire-fire of a relationship between MySQL vendors, is still very entertaining. I personally blame the use of GPL licensing. I hate to be yet another commentor that drops the “P”-word, so I will drop the “F”-word instead; the Freebsd licensing allows for a kind of community growth, collaboration and mind share the likes of which the MySQL forks could only dream of.

hennsen 9y ago

Oh, and we „accidentally“ forgot to mention in the introduction paragraph, that MariaDB is the „fork“ of the people who actually invented MySQL and made all that, including our own business, possible in the first place. A fork that‘s created because Oracle gives a shit about really open community development but pushes their secrecy and self centered view and processes into the open source world wherever they can for their own financial gain and nothing else. Just saying, cause to somebody not aware of history it might sound like there are some crazy open source folks making their own thing at mariadb. (And im only referring to the introduction, it might be better explained somewhere else in the text, but i didn’t see that browsing through)

r1ch 9y ago

I've been growing increasingly concerned by MariaDB bugs. The latest Debian versions from mariadb.org had annoying libmysqlclient symbol conflicts with Debian packages and it still isn't fixed in the latest stable release. I also recently found out that MariaDB still ships the query cache built in (which is now completely removed from MySQL) and even with query_cache_type = off, it somehow still enabled itself and is in a broken state that was causing simple SELECT statements to return empty results. This article is making me consider the switch to Percona Server quite seriously.

hugs 9y ago

What do people here think of the (BSL) Business Source License? The MariaDB folks are using it for their MaxScale product. The BSL is intended to be a sustainable way to pay for open source software development. (BSL's tl;dr is that it's a proprietary license that reverts to an open source license after a period of time.)

_ix 9y ago

OpenStack has been mentioned here a few times which caught my eye. Our DBA (is that still a thing most places?) has requested that we prefer Percona over MariaDB in future infrastructure roll outs. I'm currently wrestling with Percona and it seems to be a confusing mess to me. Admittedly, I'm only a casual database consumer, but I've never had problems like this with postgres ERROR! mysql pid file /run/mysqld/mysql.pid /var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid empty or not readable Installation has been a pain with conflicting/incompatible versions of galera. I just want a simple ha database; is that so much to ask for?

fideloper 9y ago
`I just want a simple ha database; is that so much to ask for?` Yep! HA (and related, CAP) necessarily comes with trade offs. Databases being our store where we expect ACID compliance adds an extra layer of needs that makes multi-master (and similar concepts) "hard AF".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]