Author Archives: Robert Silén
In October 2025, we launched the first State of MariaDB Survey to learn how the community really uses MariaDB. Today, we’re excited to share the results.
Why we did this
We wanted to move beyond assumptions and get real data from the people who work with MariaDB every day—developers, DBAs, architects, consultants, and everyone in between. The goal was simple: understand how MariaDB is actually being used so we can make it better.
What we learned
The survey covered seven areas: background and experience, organizational use, use cases, tech stacks, deployment practices, challenges, and community engagement.
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Continue reading “State of MariaDB 2025: The Results Are In”
We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Python Hackathon. We sat down with the Innovation track second place winners to learn more about the team and their submission.
Sunny Kumar, Abhijeet Dhanotiya, Anuj Gupta, Tushan Kumar Sinha, and Anand Vyas developed Metadata-Hub, a multimodal semantic search application using MariaDB Vector and OpenAI’s CLIP model. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the interview below.
Before we start, a short explanation:
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We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Python Hackathon. We sat down with the Innovation track first place winners to learn more about the team and their submission.
Aakanksha Singh and Mihir Phalke developed an Adaptive Query Optimizer for MariaDB Vector, addressing performance challenges in vector similarity search operations. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the interview below.
Introducing Mihir and Aakanksha
Mihir: My name is Mihir Phalke and alongside me is Aakanksha Singh.
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We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Hackathon at the BangPypers meetup in Bengaluru. We are now interviewing the winner submissions, continuing with the Integration track second place winner.
We sat down with Ria Kulkarni and Revanth Sreeram Ambati who developed a Dagster integration for MariaDB, bringing modern data orchestration capabilities to the MariaDB ecosystem. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation.
For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the summary below.
First, let us repeat a short introduction on the topic of data orchestration that we also shared in the interview with the Airflow Integration track winner.
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Continue reading “Dagster integration for MariaDB – 2nd place in MariaDB BangPypers Hackathon 2025”
We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Hackathon at the BangPypers meetup in Bengaluru. We sat down with the Integration track first place winner to learn more about the team and their submission.
Pratush Maheshwari and Jyothi Muthuraj developed an Apache Airflow integration for MariaDB, addressing a significant gap in the data engineering ecosystem. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the summary below.
But first, a short introduction to the topic of data orchestration.
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This blog post is based on the YouTube presentation “MariaDB vs PostgreSQL: Technical Deep Dive | Architecture, Performance & Design Trade-offs” by Manoj Vakeel, part of MariaDB Foundation’s ongoing series exploring core database design choices and how they impact modern workloads.
The goal here is not to pick a “winner,” but to provide clear architectural insight for CTOs, database engineers, and system architects making decisions in 2025 and beyond.
“Both are powerful engines — both are proven in production — but they take very different routes to get there.” — Manoj Vakeel, MariaDB plc
Why this matters
PostgreSQL and MariaDB are two of the most widely adopted open-source relational databases.
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Continue reading “MariaDB vs PostgreSQL: Understanding the Architectural Differences That Matter”
There are a couple days left until the survey closes – take this as a gentle nudge to participate if you’ve been meaning to 🙂
👉 https://mariadb.typeform.com/survey-2025
Response so far
I’ve been sharing invitations to participate in various communities and have been getting good responses. The more the better for the final report – so if you know somebody who should participate, I would appreciate it very much if you asked them to!
We’ve been amazed by the response so – thank you all that have taken the time to participate!
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Continue reading “Last Call: State of MariaDB 2025 Survey (+ New Preview Insights)”
MariaDB plc recently acquired SkySQL and rebranded it MariaDB Cloud that offers serverless MariaDB as a service. Kaj Arnö interviewed the technical father, and now it is time for a practical, technical kick-the-tires look at MariaDB Cloud.
In this tutorial, I’ll show developers how to set up a MariaDB Cloud database and load sample data in under 10 minutes. Perfect for showcasing simple SQL commands and MariaDB features with our public data set openflights – which incidentally is what one of the tracks in our ongoing hackathon is about.
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Continue reading “MariaDB Cloud – kicking the tires with openflights data”