One week left to join AI RAG Hackathon by Helsinki Python meetup (remote participation possible)

One week left to join the AI RAG Hackathon with MariaDB Vector and Python! 

Winners get to demo at the Helsinki Python meetup in May, receive merit and publicity from MariaDB Foundation and Open Ocean Capital, and prizes from Finnish verkkokauppa.com. 

To participate, gather a team (1-5 people) and submit an idea by the end of March for one of the two tracks. You then have until May 5th to develop the idea before the meetup 27th May.

  1. Integration track: Enable MariaDB Vector in an existing open source project or AI-framework.

Join our AI Hackathon with MariaDB Vector

We are excited to announce a hackathon with MariaDB Vector and Python. Since we are reaching outside our bubble, let’s start from the beginning: 

MariaDB, the open-source database powers the world’s most demanding applications, from Wikipedia to global financial institutions. Now MariaDB Vector is bringing AI-ready vector search natively into the open-source database world. MySQL users ahoy: 

Our hackathon is your chance to explore AI possibilities with MariaDB Vector and Python. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or AI enthusiast, MariaDB Foundation invites you to build innovative AI applications, compete for prizes, and showcase your work.

MariaDB 11.8 is LTS

Confirming what you probably already expected: MariaDB Server 11.8 will be a long-term support release. 

Now a Release Candidate – GA in May

With MariaDB Vector as the lead new feature, MariaDB 11.8 succeeds the previous LTS MariaDB 11.4 from a year ago.

As of now, MariaDB 11.8 is at the Release Candidate stage, with GA planned for May.

Lots of new features since MariaDB 11.4

MariaDB 11.8 has about 60 features, large and small, on top of the previous LTS, MariaDB 11.4. At our recent MariaDB Day on 1 Feb 2025 in Brussels, MariaDB Corporation Chief Architect Sergei Golubchik gave an overview of 11.8.

MariaDB Day Brussels Aftertaste 2025-02

Back from Brussels! With a bit of time to reflect, I’d like to share the aftertaste from our MariaDB Day, our very own FOSDEM Fringe Event. Prepare for an information-packed blog entry with links to the presentations, including live recordings and often the slide decks.

Billionaire controversy cancelled

Brussels during the first weekend of February is a hotbed of Open Source. The weather might not be hot, in contrast to the discussions in the corridors and rooms of the ULB university. The hottest topic expected – boycotting the presentation of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey – didn’t really happen.

What do you expect from vector storage in databases?

We’re no mind readers, so from time to time, we like to do polls. Polls are quantitative in nature, so coming up with the right question is not enough – we need to do a bit of mind reading in coming up with the alternatives.

Quick development of text based RAG apps

Our hypothesis was that RAG is the cool thing to do with vector based databases, and specifically text based RAG. The conference talks we’ve given on MariaDB Vector (such as at the 24th SFSCON in Bozen, Südtirol, Italy on 8 Nov 2024) have stressed the value of easily being able to develop AI applications that answer user prompts based on knowledge in a specific text mass, not on the overall training data of an LLM.

MariaDB Day Sat 1 Feb 2025 in Brussels

We have the date, we have the place , we have the theme! So we ask you to save the date.

Date: Saturday 1 Feb 2025 (10:00-17:00)

Place: Brussels, SQ Lily-Rose, Avenue Arnaud Fraiteur 15-23, close to FOSDEM

Theme: Vectors, RAG and all things new in MariaDB Server

Registration: Please register here with Meetup

With the Open Source community convening for FOSDEM, we have noted Brussels during the first weekend of February is a great time to meet, chat, and share news and ideas.

Try RAG with MariaDB Vector on your own MariaDB data!

The day has come that you have been waiting for since the ChatGPT hype began: You can now build creative AI apps using your own data in MariaDB Server! By creating embeddings of your own data and storing them in your own MariaDB Server, you can develop RAG solutions where LLMs can efficiently execute prompts based on your own specific data as context.

Why RAG?

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) creates more accurate, fact-based GenAI answers based on data of your own choice, such as your own manuals, articles or other text corpses. RAG answers are more accurate and fact-based than general Large Language Models (LLM) without having to train or fine-tune a model.

Announcing the MariaDB Vector Bounty Program!

Today, we are excited to announce a new fund to help give MariaDB Vector a high-quality integration into as many LLM frameworks as possible. This means that you can get rewarded for integrating MariaDB Vector into a known framework! This program will run until the end of February 2025.

How it will work

  1. Pick a framework: You need to pick one of the frameworks from the list curated by Qdrant that you would like to work on adding MariaDB Vector support to.
  2. Contact us: Contact us on the MariaDB Zulip, in the General channel, just create a topic.