The “MySQL 5.1 Plugins Development” book is finally published

If you want to know more about MySQL and MariaDB plugins read below. Our (Andrew Hutchings and mine) book MySQL 5.1 Plugins Development was just published by Packt. As far as I know it’s the first and the only book completely dedicated to MySQL Plugin API. It covers all existing in 5.1 plugin types, from Daemon to Storage Engines, and does not shun from explaining less known or poorly understood features of the plugin API. It describes newer plugin API extensions too – such as authentication plugins and recent CREATE TABLE extension. …

Mirroring MariaDB

We rely on a network of mirrors to efficiently distribute MariaDB to the world. It would be impossible for us to distribute MariaDB without the assistance of our mirrors. Thank you!

Today we’d like to announce that thanks to the generosity of the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, mirroring MariaDB is faster and easier than ever.

If you have some extra hard drive space and spare bandwidth, please consider becoming a mirror. Instructions on how you can become an official MariaDB mirror are on the “Mirroring MariaDB” page in the AskMonty.org Knowledgebase. …

MariaDB 5.1.50 Released

Dear MariaDB users,

MariaDB 5.1.50, a branch of the MySQL database which includes all major open source storage engines, myriad bug fixes, and many community patches, has been released. MariaDB: Community developed, feature enhanced, backward compatible.

For an overview of what’s new in MariaDB 5.1.50, please see the release notes.

Highlights include MariaDB 5.1.50 based on MySQL 5.1.50, includes XtraDB 5.1.49-12, and have some bug fixes in the Aria storage engine. For finer grained details, please view the changelog.

MariaDB is available in source and binary form for a variety of platforms and is available from the download pages. …

Rename Maria Contest Winner

After two months of submissions, Monty Program employee review, community voting and Monty’s final decision, we are happy to announce that the Maria storage engine will henceforth be known as …

Aria!

Congratulations to Chris Tooley who suggested the name. Chris said about Aria in his submission, “Maria without the ‘M’, plus aria is a pleasant musical term.” Chris is now the proud new owner of a System 76 Meerkat net-top computer. Thanks to our good friends at System76 for providing this nifty prize.

Hopefully, in time, “Aria” will also be a pleasing database engine term. …

Comments on Kostja’s motivations on hacking MySQL

Recently Kostja posted two insightful blog posts about his thoughts on the currently fragmented MySQL landscape and quality of a piece of code contributed by a “community member”, which is a MySQL euphemism for a person not employed by MySQL. (Hence, the full time MySQL developers are themselves not members of their own community?)

I wanted to comment on both posts, but found out Kostja only allows logged in LiveJournal users to comment, which I am not. Since the posts were interesting enough, I suppose they deserve a comment in a new blog post like this instead. …

MariaDB on Windows

For some time, we haven’t had any binary distribution on Windows. This was bad because a significant number of our downloads of earlier releases was from Windows people.

So, I’m working to change this. The first step is to revive the noinstall zip files. This isn’t too difficult, just run the scripts. In theory, at least.

Actually the build scripts didn’t work for me, but the problems with them were really minor. So I did some of the steps manually and modified the scripts a bit. Looks like it worked.

I’m now uploading the windows zip file to the mirrors. You should be able to download it from http://askmonty.org/wiki/MariaDB:Download. …

MariaDB 5.1.44b Released

MariaDB 5.1.44b Linux and Solaris binaries, Ubuntu/Debian/CentOS packages, and source are now available for download.

This is a bugfix/security release of MariaDB 5.1.44.

From the MariaDB 5.1.44b Release Notes:

MariaDB 5.1.44b fixes a buffer overflow that might potentially allow an authenticated user to run arbitrary code inside the server. It also has a fix for MySQL Bug #53371: “Security hole with bypassing grants using special path in db/table names.” In all other respects, it is the same as MariaDB 5.1.44.

See the MariaDB 5.1.44 Release Notes for a summary of the differences between MariaDB 5.1.42 and MariaDB 5.1.44.

Monty to speak at Open Source Bridge 2010

Open Source Bridge dubs itself as the conference for open source citizens. It happens June 1-4 2010, in beautiful Portland, Oregon. The young event (it celebrates its second birthday this year), seems to already have a great database track.

From Monty Program Ab, we have Monty himself leading a session on The State of MariaDB. So if you want to go meet the creator of MySQL, the founder of MariaDB, or just taste some Salmiakki vodka, you certainly want to be there at Open Source Bridge. …