Bringing Oracle’s Associative Arrays to MariaDB

One of the standout features of Oracle PL/SQL is the associative array — a versatile and efficient in-memory data structure that developers rely on for fast temporary lookups, streamlined batch processing, and dynamic report generation.

With the MariaDB 12.1 preview release, we’re excited to announce that associative arrays have landed in MariaDB as part of our growing set of Oracle compatibility features. This milestone, tracked under MDEV-34319, brings Oracle-style associative arrays into the MariaDB procedural language — complete with native type declarations, variable construction, and method support.

Let’s explore what’s included, what’s different, and how this feature was implemented from the ground up. 

Hetzner Becomes Gold Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation: Powering Our Build Infrastructure

We are delighted to welcome Hetzner as a Gold Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation!

Hetzner’s exceptional commitment to supporting our infrastructure has a direct and strategic impact on our operations. In particular, their sponsorship enables us to maintain and expand our Buildbot system — the backbone of testing and verifying MariaDB Server across platforms, architectures, and configurations. You can explore it live here: https://mariadb.org/mariadb-buildbot.

Building MariaDB, Bit by Bit

Buildbot is essential to the MariaDB Foundation’s mission.

Nextcloud joins MariaDB Foundation as Silver Sponsor, strengthening the European open source backbone

We are proud to welcome Nextcloud GmbH to the MariaDB Foundation sponsor family as a Silver Sponsor. As the world’s most popular privacy-focused platform for secure file sharing, collaboration, and communication, Nextcloud stands as a pillar of digital sovereignty — a value that resonates deeply with MariaDB Foundation’s mission.

Built in Europe, trusted worldwide, Nextcloud is a champion of user-controlled data. By supporting MariaDB Foundation, Nextcloud affirms its commitment to a fully open, auditable, and sovereign technology stack—empowering users, businesses, and governments to stay in control of their data and avoid vendor lock-in.

Crest Infosolutions LLC Joins MariaDB Foundation as Silver Sponsor

Accelerating Digital Transformation Through Open Source Innovation

The MariaDB Foundation is proud to welcome Crest Infosolutions LLC as a Silver Sponsor, marking a significant step forward in fostering enterprise-grade open-source adoption. This partnership underscores Crest’s mission to deliver robust, secure, and scalable technologies that empower global organizations to thrive in the era of digital transformation.

Driving Open Source Adoption Across Enterprises

Crest Infosolutions brings over a decade of experience in delivering open-source excellence to its clients. Crest is already a long-standing partner of MariaDB plc and, by joining the MariaDB Foundation’s ecosystem of supporters, Crest reinforces its long-standing commitment to open technologies, developer collaboration, and sustainable innovation.

New Silver Sponsor: Releem Boosts MariaDB Performance with Smarter Tuning and Optimization

We’re delighted to welcome Releem as the newest Silver Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation!

Releem is a database performance management platform that helps teams ensure consistent and reliable database performance through continuous profiling, configuration tuning, and SQL query optimization. It brings together everything needed to streamline monitoring and performance improvements — all in one place.

With support for MariaDB, MySQL, Percona, and AWS Aurora, Releem works seamlessly across on-premise deployments (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud-managed environments such as AWS RDS.

“We built Releem to simplify database performance management and eliminate the guesswork from tuning and optimization.

Scarf Joins as Gold Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation

We are thrilled to welcome Scarf as a Gold Sponsor of the MariaDB Foundation!

Scarf’s commitment to improving open source distribution and visibility aligns closely with our mission to ensure the continued openness, innovation, and sustainability of MariaDB Server. As a platform that helps open-source projects understand and grow their user base, Scarf brings unique value to the ecosystem—not just through sponsorship, but through actionable insights that benefit the broader community.

For the MariaDB Foundation, understanding who uses MariaDB—and how, where, and why—is key to making better decisions. Scarf’s privacy conscious analytics help us move beyond assumptions and anecdotes, giving us real-world data to guide our outreach, improve our documentation, tailor our events, and strengthen our developer ecosystem.

The Round Table Expands: A Queen’s Reflections on Unity and Momentum

Legend says Queen Guinevere once presided over a court where knights debated honor and destiny. In my version, the knights bring code diffs, sponsorship agreements, and opinions on open source governance. There’s less jousting, more Zoom calls — and while I lack a crown, I do wield a formidable calendar and an unshakable belief in collaboration.

As I reflect on the May 2025 meeting of the MariaDB Foundation Board, one truth stands tall (in shining armor):  the MariaDB kingdom is not divided. It is uniting.

Harmony in the Realm

The collaboration between MariaDB Foundation and MariaDB plc has never been more dynamic — or more impactful.

New Silver Sponsor: Senticore Technologies Chooses MariaDB for High-Performance Engineering and AI Applications

We welcome Senticore Technologies as a Silver Sponsor. Senticore, a leader in engineering and manufacturing applications, focuses on cutting-edge AI solutions, particularly for the aerospace and defense sectors, and powers critical systems worldwide. Senticore addresses these sectors’ concerns with locally deployed LLMs. Their platform integrates PDFs related to manufacturing, maintenance, and inspections processes into the digital thread. MariaDB supports their data-intensive workloads, crucial for high performance, reliability, and security, and its Vector capabilities are particularly important to Senticore’s AI development, enabling efficient storage and retrieval of LLM vector embeddings.

Senticore Technologies is renowned for pushing innovation in complex technical domains.