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MariaDB System Properties

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An open source RDBMS, enhanced with high availability, security, interoperability and performance capabilities, with built in compatibility with MySQL and Oracle Database. MariaDB ColumnStore provides a column-oriented storage engine for analytical workloads. MariaDB Server also supports vector embedded search for AI-driven applications.

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
Graph DBMS

with OQGraph storage engine
Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	91.46
Rank	#13	Overall
	#9	Relational DBMS

Website

mariadb.com

Site of MariaDB Corporation
mariadb.org

Site of MariaDB Foundation

Technical documentation

mariadb.com/kb/en/library

Developer

MariaDB plc (MariaDB Enterprise Platform and MariaDB)

The lead developer Monty Widenius is the original author of MySQL

Initial release

2009

Fork of MySQL, which was first released in 1995

Current release

11.5.2, August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

GPL version 2, commercial enterprise subscription available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C and C++

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
Solaris
Windows

ColumnStore storage engine not available on Windows

Data scheme

yes

Dynamic columns are supported

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary native API

Supported programming languages

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Eiffel
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

PL/SQL compatibility added with version 10.3

Triggers

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

several options for horizontal partitioning and Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

not for MyISAM storage engine

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

not for in-memory storage engine

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

with MEMORY storage engine

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MariaDB is the most powerful open source relational database – modern SQL and JSON support, Oracle Database compatibility, continuous availability and comprehensive security.

MariaDB can be deployed as a standard database, or as a data warehouse. It supports transactional, analytical and hybrid transactional/analytical processing (HTAP) with row storage for fast transactions and columnar storage for scalable analytics.

MariaDB's versatility stems in large part from its pluggable storage engine architecture, with different storage engines optimized for different workloads.

MariaDB database portfolio (on-premise, or private cloud)

MariaDB Enterprise Server is an enhanced, hardened and secured version of MariaDB created to provide customers with enterprise reliability, stability and long-term support.

MariaDB ColumnStore is a columnar storage engine for MariaDB, transforming it into a data warehouse for interactive, ad hoc analytics at scale. In addition, it has optional support for massively parallel processing and object storage (e.g., Amazon S3).

MariaDB MaxScale is an advanced database proxy for MariaDB. It abstracts away the physical database infrastructure so developers don't have to worry about using separate read/write connections or handling load balancing, and DBAs can add replicas/nodes or perform upgrades without interrupting production applications.

Competitive advantages

MariaDB Servers have many features unavailable in other open source relational databases.

Encryption at rest
Point-in-time rollback
Multi-master clustering
Encryption at rest
Sharding
Table and log compression
Temporal tables
Oracle PL/SQL compatibility
Columnar storage

MariaDB provides additional features previously unseen in open source relational databases.

Zero Interruption Failover (ZIF) preserves existing connections, recovers any in-flight transactions and retries any failed queries, making database instance failures completely transparent to applications.

Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP) stores data in both row and columnar formats, enabling customer-facing transactional applications to incorporate fast analytics on near real-time data.

Typical application scenarios

Web, SaaS and Cloud operational applications that require high availability, scalability and performance for transactional and analytical processing workloads.

Key customers

Deutsche Bank, DBS Bank, Nasdaq, Red Hat, ServiceNow, Verizon and Walgreens

Featured customer stories

Market metrics

MariaDB is the default database in the LAMP stack supplied by Red Hat and SUSE Linux, and the cloud stacks offered by Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Rackspace.

Licensing and pricing models

MariaDB plc subscriptions cover our free, open source database, Community Server, production databases including MariaDB Enterprise Server, ColumnStore, and MaxScale. Subscriptions can be product-specific with optional service and support contracts for contracted, extended periods of time.

Related products and services

We invite representatives of vendors of related products to contact us for presenting information about their offerings here.

More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

MariaDB strengthens its position in the open source RDBMS market
5 April 2018, Matthias Gelbmann

PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2017
2 January 2018, Paul Andlinger, Matthias Gelbmann

Big gains for Relational Database Management Systems in DB-Engines Ranking
2 February 2016, Matthias Gelbmann

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Recent citations in the news

MariaDB Buys Back SkySQL In Database Flexibility Push
26 August 2025, CRN Magazine

What a difference 2 years makes: MariaDB buys back SkySQL
27 August 2025, theregister.com

MariaDB Accelerates Cloud Deployments, Adds Agentic AI and Serverless Capability with Acquisition of SkySQL
26 August 2025, Business Wire

MariaDB buys back the company it sold two years ago
26 August 2025, InfoWorld

MariaDB buys its former subsidiary SkySQL to enhance its agentic AI and serverless capabilities
26 August 2025, SiliconANGLE

provided by Google News

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