Selecting the right database

How do you select a database in practice? How do you pretend to select it? And, if you want to be serious, how do you select it logically?

Those are the key questions I dug into, during my keynote last week at Percona Live Online.

For those who feel they don’t want to listen to the entire 30 minute video of the presentation, I have compiled a number of entry points for you below:

  • 0:23 Silly hat meme, “Teknologmössa”
  • 2:19 Agenda
  • 2:43 Choosing a database in practice
  • 3:59 Pretending to choose a database
  • 5:00 Triggers for making a fresh choice
  • 5:51 Monetary impulses
  • 7:53 Database lifecycle impulses
  • 10:07 MariaDB 5.5 on Github
  • 11:24 Framework for database choice: 1.

Congratulations, MySQL, 25 years today!

Time flies!

It certainly doesn’t feel like 25 years ago that Monty released MySQL. At that time, I thought it was a bit redundant of Monty to create Yet Another Database, the world was full of them already. But MySQL turned out to become the database for Internet, growing hand-in-hand with PHP (and Perl and Python). 

When MySQL was created 1995, Monty’s oldest daughter My was six years old. When the first MariaDB was released 2009, My’s little sister Maria was one year younger, five years old.

The oldest mysql.com site I found: 5 July 1998

One innovation over the other databases was the license model.

Planet MariaDB underwent liberal facelift

Planet MariaDB has been reworked from scratch, getting a new instance with the same look and feel as the rest of mariadb.org.

Three news items, related to that: One bad, one neutral, one good. I’m saving the good one for last, as I hope you will like it.

Bad news: The old Planet had five different RSS feeds, we now have only one. We maintain the format changes only on one RSS feed, which means that some of you will have to update your RSS feed to https://mariadb.org/planet-feed.xml (also listed on Planet MariaDB). That said, we are working on further redirects;

MariaDB 5.5 R.I.P.

Requiescat in pace. May MariaDB 5.5 rest in peace!

As the maintenance policy of the MariaDB Foundation states, we are committed to maintaining each release for 5 years. MariaDB 5.5 was announced for General Availability on 11 April 2012, so EOL was originally on 11 April 2017. At that point, we extended it by three years, due to its widespread usage in distributions.

Today, we have 11 April 2020, so this is no accidental, sudden death. Everyone could see it coming.

One Final Release MariaDB 5.5.68

However, we have decided to build one final release MariaDB 5.5.68, with remaining security updates.

Join the Solstice Run Sat 20 June 2020

My favourite running track is full! Full of newbie runners, young and old. Mostly running alone, sometimes in pairs – but all following social distancing. 

Social distancing can be coupled with emotional closeness. That’s at least what Sauli Niinistö propagates, the President of Finland. In line with these two phenomena – emotional closeness between isolated colleagues, and the boom of running as a source of energy during lockdown – we are launching the Solstice Run

We want to inspire non-runners to run

As initiators, we want to inspire others to start running.

Congratulations on SkySQL, the DBaaS offering!

Congratulations, MariaDB Corporation, on releasing SkySQL, a DBaaS offering for MariaDB Server! This is a big step for MariaDB Corporation, and we in the MariaDB Foundation hope it’s going to be a success for you and for MariaDB Server. 

We welcome SkySQL as a further contributor to the adoption of MariaDB Server, and look forward to it driving in new categories of users.

To find out more, check out https://mariadb.com/skysql/.

Heads up: Renewing MariaDB Downloads

Time to renew downloads.mariadb.org! We are embarking on a long project. A large part of our user base mainly interacts with us through downloading new versions. Renewing MariaDB Downloads is the biggest-impact project of all of 2020, for that part of our user base.

Projects like this often get launched when external and internal impulses coincide. Our users have asked for a more consistent, simpler user experience. Advanced users would like a programmatic interface (a.k.a. REST API) for part of the functionality. And the current codebase needs refactoring attention, as it has served past its best-before date.

Life after this

On Monday, I sent out an email to the staff of MariaDB Foundation. In the hope that my thinking is also applicable for someone else, here’s a slightly edited excerpt:

My email to our staff

For an unknown amount of time, we will live under exceptional circumstances. Yet, there will be life both during and after the Corona pandemic. With this email, I want to share my view on how Corona affects our organisation, on how we sustain life during Corona and on how we best prepare for life after Corona.

When facing adverse times, I fall back on thoughts and values I have read and contemplated.