Tell us how to DROP USER!

Shortly, we will start coding a task, for which we would appreciate your input: How would you like to DROP USER?

Why do we ask?

DROP user (originating in MySQL in 2004) always used to just drop the account from the privilege tables, but left all existing connections active. You can argue that this was questionable in 2004, but it’s really unexpected and confusing in 2025, with MariaDB being ubiquitous as it is.

So now we’re considering changing it.

But changing a 20-year-old behavior cannot be done lightly. We want to ask
you, our users, what would you prefer DROP USER to do.

Wrapping up the MariaDB Bucharest Meetup

This past Friday was reserved for our very own cozy event in Bucharest, planned by the romanian squad of the MariaDB Foundation. With an audience ranging from students just starting out on their journey up to seniors with experience in multiple database servers and AI, lots of interesting talks took place. We were glad to meet the Head of Domains and IT Technology of our gold sponsor, IONOS.

Although not his first visit in Romania, Monty’s attendance was a welcome sight, even bringing in people from the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

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.

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.

Finally here: MariaDB Vector Preview!

We’re here, we’re open source, and we have RDBMS based Vector Search for you! With the release of MariaDB 11.6 Vector Preview, the MariaDB Server ecosystem can finally check out how the long-awaited Vector Search functionality of MariaDB Server works. The effort is a result of collaborative work by employees of MariaDB plc, MariaDB Foundation and contributors, particularly from Amazon AWS. 

Previously on “MariaDB Vector”

If you’re new to Vector, this is what’s happened so far:

The main point: MariaDB Vector is ready for experimentation 

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.

MariaDB Dump File Compatibility Change

Both MariaDB and MySQL have been around a long time now, and there is always a difficult balance between maintaining compatibility whilst also solving security issues that arise. With the latest bugfix releases of MariaDB, we had to break compatibility a little to improve security, but there are workarounds. We figured we should explain the reasons behind it and how to make things as painless as possible for you.

The Problem

The problem we were solving, and for various reasons we had to do it very quickly, is that it is possible to generate a malicious MariaDB dump file which could execute shell commands from the MariaDB client.