Author Archives: Vicențiu Ciorbaru
MariaDB has had support for histograms as part of Engine Independent Table Statistics since 10.0. As part of Google Summer of Code (MDEV-21130), Michael Okoko, together with his mentor Sergey Petrunia, have implemented a new format (using JSON) for histograms that significantly improves the accuracy and flexibility of histograms. For those just interested in the feature details, you can skip to the “New format”, however if one is unfamiliar with the purpose of histograms, read on.
Why statistics are needed
Histograms are important for queries where the WHERE clause uses columns that are not indexed.
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MindsDB is an AutoML framework that lets software engineers do machine learning, without having to go through the whole data science pipeline. Additionally, MindsDB has done a seamless integration with MariaDB, by making use of the Connect Storage Engine.
If you want to learn more about how you can do AI straight from inside MariaDB, register for the webinar on 18th of May 16:00 GMT. MariaDB Foundation, together with MindsDB will cover the following topics in detail:
- Why AI inside the database makes sense
- How MariaDB is built to facilitate AI integrations.
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2020 has seen quite a few developments with the ARM architecture. For MariaDB things are no different. First we have expanded our testing infrastructure to cover more Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, RedHat) on ARM and we are now building packages for all of them. The next MariaDB release will include additional binary tarballs for ARM distributions, in addition to the already existing RPM and DEB packages.
All this could not be accomplished without the help of Huawei, who have donated several ARM builders to our effort. We strongly believe that only by testing on as many different platforms as possible, with as many different compilers as possible we can guarantee MariaDB’s performance and stability.
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Machine learning is one area that cannot succeed without data. Traditionally, machine learning frameworks read it from CSV files or similar data sources. This brings an interesting set of challenges because in most cases the data is stored in databases, not simple raw files. It takes time and effort to move data from one format to another. Additionally, one needs to write some code (usually python) to prepare the data just like the ML framework expects it.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw during the MariaDB Server Fest that MindsDB, an automatic machine learning system, presented their integration with MariaDB.
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It’s been close to four months since we announced our new project of renewing MariaDB Downloads. We are now ready to launch our first version. We have done a lot of work behind the scenes which will simplify further developments. A technical breakdown post is coming, but for now, let’s focus on the new features!
In with the new
User friendliness – one click to download
User friendliness is at the core of MariaDB (going all the way back to MySQL times). It should be really easy to download, install and run MariaDB.
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How MariaDB Server is tested
MariaDB Foundation is commited to ensuring MariaDB Server has a thriving community of developers and contributors. A software project cannot be maintained without proper tests. mysql-test-run is our standard testing toolkit for MariaDB Server. What it (mostly) does is run queries against one or more servers and compare their output to the expected one. This checks both behaviour and data consistency. The main principle is the server should always return the same data that is put into it.
One problem with this testing method is that it only covers the hosts’ environment. That means that if you are running Debian on x86_64 architecture, you are testing x86_64 architecture on a Debian Linux distribution. …
Continue reading “MariaDB Server’s continuous integration & testing available to community”
The MariaDB Foundation has had 2 projects accepted for Google Summer of Code 2018, of which one we deemed successful. Teodor Niculescu (teodorvicentiuniculescu@gmail.com)’s work was part of an effort to improve MariaDB’s query optimiser by providing faster histogram collection using equal-width histograms. His project is not yet in a release worthy state, yet we are working alongside him to get it feature complete (hopefully for our 10.4 version). We are glad that Teodor has chosen to present his work at the MariaDB Developer Unconference in Tampere and also remain within the community, although currently busy with his studies as is expected. …
Continue reading “MariaDB Foundation at the Google Mentor Summit”