Author Archives: Frédéric Descamps
Have you ever modified a MariaDB configuration file, restarted the service, and immediately regretted it?
You wanted to change:
innodb_buffer_pool_size=16G
but accidentally wrote:
innodb_buffer_pool_sze=16G
One missing letter.
That is enough to turn a perfectly healthy database server into a service that refuses to start.
And of course, this kind of mistake never happens during a quiet maintenance window when everybody is available.
It happens during an automated deployment.
It happens during an upgrade.
It happens on a remote server.
Or it happens just before you planned to leave for dinner.
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When people hear “online schema change” in the MySQL and MariaDB world, many immediately think about pt-online-schema-change. And for good reasons: for years, changing a large table in production was one of those tasks that could ruin your day.
Recently, I discovered that MariaDB includes a very useful hidden gem I completely missed: the ability to update a table schema without blocking concurrent DML statements for the duration of the schema change. [1]
As you probably already know, MariaDB Server supports multiple schema change algorithms.
This is an overview summary:
| ALGORITHM=INSTANT | Metadata-only change. |
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Continue reading “MariaDB Hidden Gem: Online Schema Change without pt-osc”
Some contributions improve MariaDB Server by adding new capabilities.
Some go further: they start from a concrete production problem with an existing feature, not a bug, but a design limitation, solve it upstream, and leave the whole ecosystem better off.
This is one of those contributions.
The platform team at Headout, a global platform that helps travelers discover and book curated real-life experiences, encountered a few inefficiencies in MariaDB Server around temporary tables and the HEAP engine. Instead of treating these as isolated local problems, they worked upstream. Arcadiy Ivanov, operating through Karellen, Inc.
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Interview with Federico Razzoli, nominated in the Community Leadership category.
The MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions program celebrates the people and organizations who help make the MariaDB ecosystem stronger, more open, and more useful for everyone.
Behind every open-source project, there are contributors whose work takes many forms. Some write code. Some review, test, document, teach, organize, advocate, support users, build tools, or bring MariaDB into production environments where it proves its value every day. Together, they help MariaDB remain a vibrant, collaborative, and industry-relevant database platform.
To highlight this diversity of contributions, we are launching a new series of interviews with nominees for the MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions program.
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Continue reading “MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions Nominees: Federico Razzoli”
During the last MariaDB Foundation Board Meeting (24 June 2026), Barry shared how it can be difficult to deploy an upgrade immediately and that they sometimes have to wait for one that fixes security bugs. Wait for the validation, wait for the fix, and the release. Even if the MariaDB engineers are doing incredible work, it might still not be fast enough for the security team.
That’s where Barry requested MariaDB implement a query-rewriter plugin, like the one in MySQL, to address the fact that, in a multi-tenant environment, certain queries that would trigger known vulnerabilities are never legitimately used by applications.
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Continue reading “MariaDB Server Plugins: disabled functions”
MariaDB 13.1 Preview is full of nice things.
Some are immediately visible to developers, like the new JSON operators. Some are very useful to DBAs, such as configuration validation. And some are about making security and access control easier to manage.
Today, let’s look at one of those: DENY, also known as negative grants.
Yes, negative grants.
It sounds a bit strange the first time you hear it, but the idea is very simple:
Sometimes it is easier to say “you can access everything here, except this”.
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Continue reading “MariaDB 13.1 Feature in Focus: DENY / Negative Grants”
MariaDB Server has long supported a flexible plugin architecture. Plugins allow developers to extend server functionality in areas such as data types, auditing, storage engines, information schema tables, and more.
Today, MariaDB Server plugins are typically developed in C or C++, like the server’s codebase. At least for a while
Even with the current plugin-writing approach, familiarity with MariaDB internals is beneficial because it enables you to do things you otherwise cannot. But it is not required.
A new development idea, MDEV-40189: Support plugins written in various languages, explores whether MariaDB Server could make plugin development accessible from additional programming languages.
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Continue reading “Lowering the Barrier for MariaDB Plugin Development: Plugins in More Languages”
The MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions program celebrates the people and organizations who help make the MariaDB ecosystem stronger, more open, and more useful for everyone.
Today, we’re thrilled to introduce Fariha, a recent nominee for the MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champion program in the Technical Excellence category. Fariha’s journey into the world of databases and open-source contributions is both inspiring and a testament to the vibrant MariaDB community. We sat down with Fariha to discuss her path, her work, and what this nomination means to her.
The Interview
lefred: Fariha, congratulations on your nomination for the MariaDB Foundation Seal Lion Champion program in the Technical Excellence category!
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Continue reading “MariaDB Foundation Sea Lion Champions Nominees: Fariha Shaikh”