Gets the job done without punishing you
September 20, 2020
Gets the job done without punishing you
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with MariaDB
My company provides finance-related services to customers, using our own proprietary software. We process customer transactions and store customer data in our own data center. MariaDB is our production RDBMS software - one way to look at it is that it's the bedrock on which everything rests.
We also use MariaDB for development and testing, of course. We used to be an Oracle shop but over the course of time, we migrated all of our operations to MariaDB. It meets the needs of a relatively small business efficiently and reliably.
We also use MariaDB for development and testing, of course. We used to be an Oracle shop but over the course of time, we migrated all of our operations to MariaDB. It meets the needs of a relatively small business efficiently and reliably.
- Simpler learning curve. MariaDB is a cleaner, simpler system that is (IMO) easier to learn and easier to manage effectively than many other database systems.
- Lower hardware requirements. After migrating to MariaDB from another database software system, we find that our hardware needs have substantially decreased.
- MariaDB support is very responsive. It's like they actually care. On the few occasions we've run into technical issues, support has always come through with what we needed. Once it was showing me a relatively new feature the server supported that I wasn't aware of, that, once I was able to properly make use of it helped me resolve a serious production performance issue.
- Architectural flexibility. As an example, the ready availability of synchronous (Galera) versus asynchronous replication schemes without being locked into one of the other by enormous technical complexity or punitive licensing, allows the customer to find what really works best for their needs.
- Complications from the single, global shared ibdata1 (which may be considered more an InnoDB limitation).
- Backups and restores, especially if you do partial (per db) backups. Actually the backups work very well but the restores are not pleasant.
- Certain weaknesses in Galera. Because of the way it works it doesn't handle very large single transactions very well (I understand that has improved in recent releases, but that was after we moved away from Galera), and there are altogether too many ways to stall an entire Galera cluster - you will find them.
- MariaDB has saved us enormously on licensing compared to our previous DB software vendor.
- In service, it has enabled us (speaking as the internal DB team here) to provide better service to the other teams in the company as well as our customers, with less staff.
- The level of hardware required for adequate performance, in our environment, has been much lower. Those savings have been substantial, above and beyond savings on licensing and DBA staffing levels.
(With and without RAC) My company migrated from Oracle to MariaDB. While MariaDB has some limitations (if you are used to Oracle) it has been much easier and cheaper (in several ways) to operate and has more than met my company's needs.