Author Archives: Anna Widenius
There’s a question I like to ask people sometimes—especially at turning points:
“What’s your word?”
One word to capture how you feel, where you are, or what’s driving you right now. No explanations. Just instinct.
Today, mine is: Adventure.
Not necessarily the reckless kind, but the kind that stretches you—where you step into something unfamiliar and see what happens. That’s exactly what this season at MariaDB is like.
And maybe the most “adventurous” thing I’ve done so far? Emailing Andy Pavlo.
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Continue reading “The Queen’s Gambit: Through the Looking Glass into the Query Optimizer”
We are delighted to welcome Tempesta Technologies as a Silver Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation!
Tempesta Technologies is the developer of Tempesta FW, an open-source hybrid of a web accelerator and a multi-layer firewall. Engineered for maximum efficiency, Tempesta FW is tightly integrated with the Linux TCP/IP stack and leverages cutting-edge technologies to deliver exceptional web application performance. It provides robust protection against DDoS and web attacks while ensuring smooth, high-speed operation under normal conditions.
This partnership underscores MariaDB Server’s continued commitment to performance and efficiency—not just in terms of database speed and scalability, but across the broader ecosystem that powers modern web infrastructure.
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Continue reading “Tempesta Technologies Becomes Silver Sponsor of MariaDB Foundation”
We are excited to announce that Vettabase has joined the MariaDB Foundation as a Silver Sponsor!
Vettabase is a trusted provider of database consulting services, with a strong focus on open-source technologies. Their team brings deep expertise in MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Cassandra, helping organizations around the world optimize database performance, reliability, and scalability.
Vettabase has long been an active contributor to the MariaDB ecosystem. They maintain the widely appreciated Awesome MariaDB list on GitHub—a curated collection of tools, articles, and learning resources for the MariaDB community.
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Continue reading “Vettabase Becomes Silver Sponsor of MariaDB Foundation”
Exactly one month ago, I found myself stepping into the role of CEO at MariaDB Foundation. It was a bit like being handed the keys to a beloved old ship and being told, “Don’t worry, it mostly steers itself… unless there’s a storm. Or a kraken. Or a GitHub issue.”
As someone whose surname gives away a bit of context, it’s both an honor and a deeply personal journey to be entrusted with stewarding this next chapter. I used to say that I have done my bit for the project by adding “Maria” to “MariaDB”, but what do you know it turns out – there is a lot more out there for me to do!!!
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Continue reading “The Accidental Queen of the Database Dominion – Month one”
We’re excited to announce that SkySQL has joined the MariaDB Foundation as a Silver sponsor.
SkySQL is the first and only database service designed, built and optimised specifically for MariaDB Server. Recently spun out of MariaDB plc as an independent company, SkySQL remains led by the core team which created it and continues to provide the community with unique and powerful capabilities for running production databases in the cloud. With features such as autonomous scaling, subsecond failover and multi-cloud deployment, SkySQL provides a world-class cloud experience for the MariaDB community — and supports our mission of making MariaDB Server the preferred database of choice for all organisations.
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You might have heard the story of how we picked a sea-lion as our logo. Now that this lovely beast has been with us for a while, we think it’s high time to give it a name and of course we turn to our wonderful community for suggestions.
The rules are simple: complete this form, telling us what you think we should name the sea lion and why. Later, Maria Widenius will pick her favorite from the submissions, and the winner will get a collection of MariaDB t-shirts and other swag, an artwork by Maria, and of course eternal fame!
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Galera Cluster for MySQL is a 100% synchronized cluster in regards to data modification operations (DML). It is ensured by the optimistic locking model and ability to rollback a transaction, which cannot be applied on all nodes. However, schema changes (DDL operations) are not transactional in MySQL, which adds complexity when you need to perform an upgrade or change schema of the database.
Changes made by DDL may affect results of the queries. Therefore all modifications must replicate on all nodes prior next data access. For operations which run momentarily it can be easily achieved, but schema changes may take hours to apply.
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Galera R&D team is currently finalizing new features targeted for the next MariaDB 10.5 release. This presentation is a high level overview of the most prominent Galera clustering features under work, such as:
* Non Blocking DDL – for less turbulence of schema upgrades in a cluster
* Cluster Error Voting – for immediate recovery of node failures
* XA transaction Support – for executing XA transactions in a multi-master cluster
* GTID consistency – for consistent GTIDs in hybrid cluster / replication topologies
* Black Box – cluster hardening through more detailed diagnostics
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