From Ecosystem to Architecture: Expanding How We Look at MariaDB
Over the past month, one question has been coming up with increasing frequency:
What is the MySQL / MariaDB ecosystem?
In most discussions, the answer tends to focus on contributors to the source code: engineers, committers, and core developers shaping the database itself. That perspective is both valid and essential.
But it is only part of the picture.
Over the past few months, we have been looking at the ecosystem from a different angle:
What is being built around MariaDB?
Where is it being used?
What kinds of systems does it power in practice?
This broader view captures the part of the ecosystem that is often less visible, but just as important: platforms, tools, services, and infrastructure that rely on MariaDB as a foundation.
Making the Ecosystem Visible
To address this, we launched the MariaDB Server Ecosystem Hub:
The Hub provides a structured view of the ecosystem, including:
- Platforms running MariaDB
- Tools integrating with it
- Services built around it
- Infrastructure it runs on
The goal is simple: make the ecosystem around MariaDB easier to discover and understand.
From Catalog to Context
However, building the Hub made one thing clear very quickly.
A catalog can show what exists.
It does not yet show how everything fits together.
In practice, technology decisions are rarely made in isolation. Teams do not choose a database alone. They choose architectures: combinations of infrastructure, data platforms, and application layers that together form a working system.
Introducing Solution Stacks
This is the next step we are now starting to develop: Solution Stacks.
Solution Stacks are reference architectures built from real technologies in the ecosystem. They combine multiple layers into coherent, production-oriented setups that reflect how systems are actually built and operated.
They are designed to:
- Show how different technologies work together in practice
- Reflect real deployment patterns
- Support architecture and vendor selection decisions
The first Solution Stacks are currently in progress and will be published in the coming weeks.
An Open Invitation
If you are building with MariaDB — whether as a platform provider, tool developer, or service partner — you are already part of this ecosystem.
We invite you to be part of shaping how it is represented.
As we move from listing technologies to showing complete architectures, the ecosystem becomes easier to navigate, easier to understand, and more useful for everyone evaluating and building with MariaDB!
