We had the pleasure on Friday to take individual calls with everybody who submitted to the ideation phase of the MariaDB AI RAG hackathon.
The ideation phase deadline passed last week, and we are happy to share that we received several promising submissions for both the innovation track and the integration track. Innovation involves applications using MariaDB Vector, like RAG, and integration being enabling MariaDB Vector in an existing framework.
Participants range from individual contributors to even a corporate team. Some already have some experience with AI, and some are newcomers to RAG.
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The following post was written by Stefano Petrilli, who contributed UUIDv4 and UUIDv7 implementations to MariaDB. Thank you, Stefano!
The original version of the Universal Unique IDentifiers (UUID), which is now known as UUIDv1, made his first appearance in the 1980s. The most interesting guarantee that they provide is the generation of IDs that are always unique across space and time.
To comply with this promise, it uses a combination of three elements:
- The node, which is a field that identifies the machine that generated the UUID.
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At MariaDB Day in February in Brussels, VP Engineering Vicențiu Ciurbaru delivered an inspiring presentation titled “Launch Your Open Source Career: First Steps in Contributing to MariaDB.”
In the spirit of the recent positive stats on new contributions to MariaDB, let me recap Vicentiu’s tips for anyone looking to make their first contribution.
Contributing to MariaDB is not only about writing code—it’s about joining a vibrant community where every contribution, big or small, drives innovation. We hope newcomers can see a tangible path to getting involved.
How to start contributing?
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Scratch you own itch, and help others while at it!
Why do people contribute to Open Source projects?
The question is as old as Open Source and its predecessor Free Software: Why do people contribute? We re-asked the oldie-but-goodie, and got results that confirm the old adage about scratching your own itch.
Fixing work or personal needs
The most popular answer? Fixing work or personal needs. It got 44 %, nearly half the votes. You simply need to get the job done, and there is an Open Source project that almost does it already.
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Every once in a while a truly inspiring contribution comes to us at MariaDB. Today’s timely contribution was from Sigma, and their inspiring contribution was in pull request 3937 which adds the AMEN statement for committing transactions. The need for harmonizing cultural norms with SQL standards is largely under explored aspect of engineering and here seems to be a good a place to start as any.
As described:
This pull request introduces a new statement, amen, which serves as an alternative to the traditional commit command in MariaDB. The motivation behind this change is to provide a more thematic and culturally resonant way to conclude transactions, reflecting the religious connotation of the name “MariaDB”.
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Continue reading ““Amen” statement for committing transactions”
We live in a world where national interests intertwine with IT vendor interests. Interest is currently booming in “European Alternatives“. I’m happy to note that MariaDB Server is unaffected by considerations related to protectionism. In fact, choosing Open Source protects the user – an individual, an organisation, or a government – from protectionism itself.
Licensing prevails over national interests
Politicians come and go. National interests prevail a bit longer than individual politicians.
Companies also evolve, get acquired and merged across national borders.
Licensing of already released software remains constant across mergers and acquisitions.
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Exactly one month ago, I found myself stepping into the role of CEO at MariaDB Foundation. It was a bit like being handed the keys to a beloved old ship and being told, “Don’t worry, it mostly steers itself… unless there’s a storm. Or a kraken. Or a GitHub issue.”
As someone whose surname gives away a bit of context, it’s both an honor and a deeply personal journey to be entrusted with stewarding this next chapter. I used to say that I have done my bit for the project by adding “Maria” to “MariaDB”, but what do you know it turns out – there is a lot more out there for me to do!!!
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Continue reading “The Accidental Queen of the Database Dominion – Month one”
The ideation phase of the MariaDB AI RAG Hackathon is nearing its deadline on Monday (by end of March).
We have several cool submissions so far. One is about combining the Knowledge Graph and LLMs, using MariaDB Vector Nearest Neighbour Search. Another one is about an “advanced context diff”, identifying the differences between two text corpuses based not on their literal wording, but on their content.
All of the current submissions are in the Innovation track. We would particularly like submissions in the Integration track – to add MariaDB to frameworks such as these, or other apps.
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