Poll: Help steer MariaDB Server

Our first poll is your chance to influence how MariaDB Foundation thinks about where we should focus our limited resources. What is most important for you: that we increase our efforts in fixing bugs? That we take the existing features, and make them faster? That we take the existing features, and make them easier to use? Or that we develop new functionality?

Rate each of the four items with up to five stars!

MariaDB at FOSDEM 2021

Today FOSDEM has started! Attend the live sessions happening in the MariaDB devroom (10-18 CET) – and chat about the sessions. Visit the MariaDB Stand (9:30-18) with its own chatroom. And take our poll. Note! We have video issues with the live Q&A – hope it will be fixed through FOSDEM later today. Arranging a meeting for 8000 developers is hard, and attending it can be bewildering – also online.

More notes: How To FOSDEM 2021.

Around this time each year, thousands of free and open source developers gather in Brussels for FOSDEM.

ARM improvements in 2020

2020 has seen quite a few developments with the ARM architecture. For MariaDB things are no different. First we have expanded our testing infrastructure to cover more Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, RedHat) on ARM and we are now building packages for all of them. The next MariaDB release will include additional binary tarballs for ARM distributions, in addition to the already existing RPM and DEB packages.

All this could not be accomplished without the help of Huawei, who have donated several ARM builders to our effort. We strongly believe that only by testing on as many different platforms as possible, with as many different compilers as possible we can guarantee MariaDB’s performance and stability.

Thanks Tencent!

In the name of the MariaDB Foundation, I would like to thank Tencent for their significant contributions to the MariaDB Server in 2020. The permission to, and encouragement of, Tencent staff to contribute towards MariaDB shows a superior and practical understanding of the value proposition of open source in delivering value to everyone at the same time as reducing software maintenance costs.

About Tencent’s DB Kernel Team

Tencent has a cloud native database kernel R&D team, focusing on database kernel optimisation and architecture evolution. The team is experienced (over ten years of database R&D experience) and serves hundreds of thousands of enterprise users.

MariaDB & Ecosystem Fragmentation

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”. 

Machine Learning straight through SQL

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.

Server Fest Conclusions

The MariaDB Server Fest 2020 is now over! Time for some spontaneous, initial reflections.

The MariaDB Server Fest 

To recap, MariaDB Server Fest

  • was a virtual conference
  • spread out over three days in September 2020
  • taking place first in Paris, then in New York, and last in Singapore / Beijing (three days in each location)

The Fest was a first for MariaDB Foundation

The Server Fest was a first in many ways, for MariaDB Foundation:

  • The first time we addressed the users of MariaDB Server – not the developers of MariaDB Server
  • The first time we went virtual – so far, we have always met face to face
  • The first time we did a conference with Call for Papers and an approval process – earlier, we had what we called unconferences, with a very spontaneous agenda

A roaring success

The numbers speak for themselves:

  • over 10.000 unique video views on YouTube alone
  • over 2.000 simultaneous viewers on Bilibili.com
  • 35 talks by 30 presenters
  • twelve live streams, each with six hours of talks