Item: MariaDB Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Rytis Slatkevičius

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use MariaDB as a drop-in replacement for MySQL. We benefit from the fact that it does not require changing the client side at all - we maintain some legacy applications that would not be easy (or even possible!) to change. At the same time, we benefit from the performance and stability upgrades that MariaDB offers over MySQL.

Pros and Cons

The primary reason for me to migrate from MySQL to MariaDB was its stability. I experience more than one crash with data corruption on MySQL's standard MyISAM and InnoDB; I haven't seen any with MariaDB.
I love progress reporting for ALTER TABLE queries. In MySQL you would be facing a long running ALTER TABLE query and have no way to know when it finishes. With MariaDB you see the progress in the process list (especially important if there's a boss breathing down your neck!)
I haven't done significant benchmarks, but MariaDB seems faster than MySQL. I think it is mostly evident when using subqueries.

MariaDB has added a lot of extra features over MySQL. However, I think one in particular is still missing - and really, just the one - an ability to compute median values from the data. I miss it in my work quite often.

Return on Investment

The fact that MariaDB does not crash and the data is safe helped us provide a much more stable service and has generated thousands of dollars of revenue from the new clients we could sign up.
I don't think we would have stayed with MySQL for long and would have migrated to another database; thankfully MariaDB is compatible with the MySQL client side, so we did not have to do any development for the client side to replace the engine. Developer time saved!

Alternatives Considered

MySQL, FirebirdSQL, Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB

We migrated away from MySQL because of stability issues; when choosing a new database system we considered FirebirdSQL (having some experience from other projects) and did not use it because of stability and lack of standard SQL features in its query language; and Amazon's products were too expensive for our use.

Other Software Used

CakePHP, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon DynamoDB

Likelihood to Recommend

You can use standard MySQL client side libraries to connect to MariaDB servers, however, there is one caveat: MariaDB versioning. MariaDB is now at version 10, whereas MySQL is at version 5. If the client side has hardcoded version numbers it may behave in unexpected ways as it will see mismatching versions and especially one that it does not even know about.

Overall, MariaDB is a very good drop-in replacement for MySQL, as long as your client-side does not do anything fancy.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Usability

On Debian Linux, it is recommended to install a MariaDB repository and retrieve the product from there. It is both a good and a bad thing: it is more up-to-date than Debian's version (as Debian tends to lag behind with stable software), but it also makes your packages drift away from the generic system.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar	None

Drop-in replacement for MySQL, but without crashes

Overall Satisfaction with MariaDB