ColumnStore Native Part of MariaDB 10.5

On Wednesday 24 June 2020, MariaDB Server 10.5 was released GA. While there are several cool new features included, this first 10.5 blog is about the groundbreaking new component, ColumnStore.

The big picture

ColumnStore brings data warehousing to the world of MariaDB Server. It’s a columnar storage engine (Wikipedia: Column-oriented DBMS), enabling what is often called HTAP (Wikipedia: Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing). The Columnar data type stores data by columns, not by rows, enabling quick analytical reporting over huge data volumes.

The news

The ColumnStore engine is part of MariaDB Server 10.5.

MariaDB Server Fest 14-20 Sep 2020

Join our Online Conference in September! In three different time zones, we will meet users of MariaDB Server for two packed days of presentations, interactions and insights.

The Call for Papers is open. And we have a favour to ask everyone considering attending: Please fill in our Call for Attendance survey! We need your help to ensure that we do logistics right when it comes to timing and formats, that we cover all topics that interest you, and that we prepare interactivity and tools in the best possible way.

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/.