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.

MariaDB highlights in 2024: Vectors, K1, and contributions

New Year’s Eve is when everyone takes stock of the year that has passed. At MariaDB Foundation, we’re no different.

The technical highlight: MariaDB Vector

It’s not hard to pick the technical MariaDB highlight of the year: It’s MariaDB Vector.

No big surprise there: The biggest new thing in IT is AI. AI is getting mainstream. Mainstream applications need databases. Databases need stability, performance, ease of use. And low cost.

The solution: MariaDB Server. It’s relational. It’s standard. It’s Open Source.

The business highlight: MariaDB plc on a solid footing

It’s equally easy to pick the business MariaDB highlight of the year: K1 taking over MariaDB plc.

IBM upgrading Gold to Platinum

Good news: IBM is upgrading their Gold sponsorship to Platinum!

Our trinity: Adoption, Openness, Continuity

The three pillars of MariaDB Foundation are Adoption, Openness, and Continuity.

Adoption means that we work towards MariaDB Server to be used everywhere, where you need databases. We think Open Source RDBMSes are the way to go, and we want you to choose MariaDB Server.

Openness means that we work towards making it easy for everyone to contribute towards making MariaDB Server the best Open Source RDBMS. Be it code, documentation, training materials, bug reports, feature requests.

Celebrating 15 years of innovation

We have been in festive mode this week, celebrating fifteen years of MariaDB. You may have seen our very own Ian Gilfillan’s blog MariaDB Server turns fifteen!, or the blog of Alejandro Duarte of MariaDB plc, MariaDB Server Turns 15! Here Are 15 Reasons Why Developers and DBAs Love It.

Technical overview by the creator of MariaDB Server

Now, MariaDB Server’s creator Michael »Monty« Widenius has chimed in, with a lot of technical detail. Hardly anybody is better equipped to create this technical overview, Celebrating 15 years of MariaDB.

MariaDB Foundation assisting multiple vendors

I recently helped two of our sponsors simultaneously, DBS Bank and MariaDB Plc, with a recent issue they were experiencing. This actually helped us add support for an extra cloud vendor. But before I tell the story, I first need to give a bit of background.

S3 Engine History

Back in 2019, we added the S3 engine to MariaDB Server. “S3” stands for “Simple Storage Service”, it was developed by Amazon, and it is pretty much the standard for storing objects (typically files) in the cloud. Almost every cloud vendor has their own object storage with an S3-compatible REST API.

Amazon contributes to MariaDB Vector

MariaDB Vector preview was recently released, bringing much awaited Vector Search functionality to MariaDB Server. One of the major open source contributors to MariaDB Vector has been Amazon. To share the excitement and get an inside view about what it’s like to contribute to MariaDB Server, I had a chat with software engineer Hugo Wen on the Amazon RDS team

Hugo’s contributions to MariaDB Vector

Hugo Wen’s work on vector similarity search in MariaDB and MySQL started when Amazon’s leadership identified Vector Search functionality as a critical addition and decided to invest Amazon RDS team’s time on contributing to MariaDB Vector.

Case IBM Power 10: A further step for MariaDB Server

Good news: This week, two of MariaDB Foundation’s sponsors – IBM and MariaDB plc – made an announcement that we believe to be good for both parties, as well as for the MariaDB Server user base. We humbly (and boldly) believe that this was enabled by MariaDB Foundation’s living by its core values of Adoption, Openness, and Continuity. 

Let me explain why, and start with the announcement itself:

MariaDB Enterprise Server Launches on IBM Power 10

MariaDB plc’s offering to its customers, MariaDB Enterprise Server, was launched for IBM Power 10. This was supported by a blog post from MariaDB plc (MariaDB Enterprise Server Launches on IBM Power10) and another by IBM (Announcing support for MariaDB Enterprise Server on IBM Power). 

Why I keep choosing MariaDB

Users of open source software don’t always share their stories, simply because they are satisfied. That’s why we were delighted to accept an offer from database expert Richard Bensley to share why he has repeatedly used MariaDB over the years. 

I had a chat with Richard and learnt that he has seen MariaDB as a user, customer, and even an employee of MariaDB. Despite experimenting with other solutions, new and old, his passion for MariaDB and the people behind hasn’t faltered. 

Richard has been using MariaDB in large scale production since 2012 for financial platforms, CRMs and e-commerce for regional and international use.