New MariaDB releases come with regular intervals. Releasing a new version is a balance between new functionality and bugfixes on one side, and stability on the other. How do we get optimum quality for the releases? And what exactly is quality, from the point of view of DBAs and developers that use MariaDB Server?
That’s the setting of our MariaDB Server MiniFest in two weeks.
New MariaDB Releases: The DBA & Developer Experience
This MiniFest is called “mini” for three key reasons:
- It has just one topic
- It is much shorter, less than half a day
- It happens just in one time zone
But it still builds on the pillars of success from our MariaDB Server Fest in Sep 2020:
- It features expert speakers on MariaDB Server
- It has pre-recording, subtitles, and follow-up discussions
- It is interactive, with the speakers “cloned” on Zulip chat
The special sauce
The special sauce for this MiniFest is
- Internal presenters explain the logic of release policies
- External presenters give the candid user perspective
- The desired outcome: improved processes and quality
The conference format
The internal (provider) presentations have a 10+10 minute format.
You might have heard the story of how we picked a sea-lion as our logo. Now that this lovely beast has been with us for a while, we think it’s high time to give it a name and of course we turn to our wonderful community for suggestions.
The rules are simple: complete this form, telling us what you think we should name the sea lion and why. Later, Maria Widenius will pick her favorite from the submissions, and the winner will get a collection of MariaDB t-shirts and other swag, an artwork by Maria, and of course eternal fame!
Good news for MySQL users wishing to upgrade to MariaDB: MariaDB 10.5.7 onwards understands formerly-incompatible MySQL JSON fields! This blog entry explains how to install and use them.
Introducing MYSQL_JSON plugin
Starting from MariaDB 10.5.7 (commit f6549e), it is possible to upgrade from MySQL 5.7 tables containing JSON by loading the MYSQL_JSON data type plugin.
MariaDB and MySQL JSON formats are not the same. In MySQL, the JSON type is a native type, while in MariaDB JSON is just an alias for LONGTEXT. What this means in practice is that data in JSON format are not compatible with each other.
The MariaDB Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of MariaDB 10.5.8, MariaDB 10.4.17, MariaDB 10.3.27, and MariaDB 10.2.36, the latest stable releases in their respective series.
Why do we release MariaDB again only a week after the 10.5.7, 10.4.16, etc? What’s the emergency?
The previous, scheduled, set of releases (10.2 and up) included a security related change — MariaDB server became more strict about accepting network packets from the client. It never was particularly trusting, but still there was a loophole in the handling of prepared statements where the server just assumed that the client sends the correct data. Read more
We hear you, Kristian Köhntopp! Thank you for taking the time to articulate what many others are probably thinking.
For those of you to whom this sounds cryptic, let me share how I interpreted Kristian Köhntopp’s blog MySQL: Ecosystem fragmentation (https://blog.koehntopp.info/2020/10/28/
mysql-ecosystem-fragmentation.html), published last week:
Kristian noted that the question “Which version of MySQL do you run on?” for a long time hasn’t been merely answered by a simple version number, since there are reasons to perceive MariaDB and Aurora to be “variations to the same theme”.
The MariaDB Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of MariaDB 10.5.7, MariaDB 10.4.16, MariaDB 10.3.26, MariaDB 10.2.35 and MariaDB 10.1.48, the latest stable releases in their respective series.
See the release notes and changelogs for details.
Release Notes Changelog What is MariaDB 10.5?
Release Notes Changelog What is MariaDB 10.4?
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.
The MariaDB Foundation is pleased to announce the availability of MariaDB 10.5.6, MariaDB 10.4.15, MariaDB 10.3.25, MariaDB 10.2.34 and MariaDB 10.1.47, the latest stable releases in their respective series.
The only change in all releases is a fix for a vulnerability, CVE-2020-15180.
See the release notes and changelogs for details.
Release Notes Changelog What is MariaDB 10.5?