The Rising Tide of Community Contributions to MariaDB Server

I wanted to share with you all some statistics on the incoming community contributions for the MariaDB server in the last year or so. And some of my thoughts looking at the data.

I’ve been quietly working on scripting some of my daily routines using the github CLI and the Jira REST API. Thanks to a question by Anna, the visionary MariaDB Foundation CEO, I’ve also created some scripts to fetch and summarize statistics on the incoming community contributions pull requests.

A picture’s worth a thousand words. So here we go:

This depicts the community pull requests opened or closed each month (the top graph).

The MariaDB contribution process: a step by step guide.

Inspired by my VERY long presentation on the topic at FOSDEM26 I thought I’d say a couple of words on how the contribution process works.

Contributing changes to MariaDB server is easy because it follows industry best practices: it’s using “normal” GitHub pull requests. Note that I’m working for the MariaDB Foundation. As such, “normal” for me is doing everything in the open, for everybody to see and participate. And all of the communication around the contribution (including the code review) is happening in that same pull request and is public. Until the intended end of the process: merging the pull request into the repository.

And The Winners Of The Inaugural Top External Contributor To MariaDB Award are …

Couple of weeks ago we’ve announced a poll for the Top external contribution of 2025. Thank you all that voted for the time you took to do so.

The vote was organized in two categories:

  • Organizations
  • Individuals

We are extremely happy to share that the winner of 2025 Top Contributor to MariaDB award.

In this section the Winner is:

MDEV-36737 Research and Estimation for Adapting VIDEX to MariaDB!

Congratulations to ByteDance and Haibo Yang (YoungHypo) and Rong Kang (kr11)!

A Year in Review: Notable External Contributions to MariaDB Server in 2025

It’s the time of the year to look back and reflect. In line with the holiday spirit, we’d like to highlight some of the MariaDB Server contributions from 2025 that the team found particularly inspiring and interesting, and to say thank you to everyone who submitted them.

At the end of the post, we invite the community to help us recognise the most impactful external contributions of the year.

Adaptive Query Optimizer for MariaDB Vector – Innovation Winner of MariaDB Python Hackathon 2025

We recently announced the winners  of the MariaDB Python Hackathon. We sat down with the Innovation track first place winners to learn more about the team and their submission.

Aakanksha Singh and Mihir Phalke developed an Adaptive Query Optimizer for MariaDB Vector, addressing performance challenges in vector similarity search operations. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the interview below.

Introducing Mihir and Aakanksha

Mihir: My name is Mihir Phalke and alongside me is Aakanksha Singh.

Dagster integration for MariaDB – 2nd place in MariaDB BangPypers Hackathon 2025

We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Hackathon at the BangPypers meetup in Bengaluru. We are now interviewing the winner submissions, continuing with the Integration track second place winner.

We sat down with Ria Kulkarni and Revanth Sreeram Ambati who developed a Dagster integration for MariaDB, bringing modern data orchestration capabilities to the MariaDB ecosystem. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation.

For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the summary below. 

First, let us repeat a short introduction on the topic of data orchestration that we also shared in the interview with the Airflow Integration track winner. 

Apache Airflow integration for MariaDB – winner of MariaDB BangPypers Hackathon 2025

We recently announced the winners of the MariaDB Hackathon at the BangPypers meetup in Bengaluru. We sat down with the Integration track first place winner to learn more about the team and their submission. 

Pratush Maheshwari and Jyothi Muthuraj developed an Apache Airflow integration for MariaDB, addressing a significant gap in the data engineering ecosystem. They were interviewed by Robert Silén, Community Advocate and Kaj Arnö, Executive Chairman of MariaDB Foundation. For the recorded interview, watch it on Youtube, or read the summary below. 

But first, a short introduction to the topic of data orchestration. 

BangPypers x MariaDB Python Hackathon – Winners Announced!

Last Saturday marked an exciting milestone: the announcement of the winners in our first large-scale MariaDB Python Hackathon, organised in collaboration with BangPypers, HackerEarth, and MariaDB plc. Over the past months, developers from across India have explored new ways to make MariaDB easier to use, more connected, and better integrated into today’s most important open-source ecosystems.

This post celebrates the outstanding contributions in both the Integration Track — projects that help MariaDB work seamlessly with other tools and frameworks – and the Innovation Track – projects that showcase existing MariaDB features and make it easy to learn, copy, and adapt.