MariaDB for Universities Program

The MariaDB for Universities Program is an educational initiative by the MariaDB Foundation and MariaDB plc. The academic program aims at supporting tuition in relational databases in university courses and bringing the knowledge and expertise of a world-class open-source relational database project to universities and their students.

Offering for Universities

For MariaDB Partner Universities, the MariaDB for Universities Program includes: 

  • Enhanced Database Curriculum: Use up-to-date lecture materials that make database theory practical and engaging (see uni.mariadb.org).
  • Low-Threshold Testing Environment: Set up a stage environment for a feature complete relational database, without any licensing hassle.
  • Coding Opportunities: Provide students with real-world coding experiences contributing to open-source projects in hackathons and assignments.
  • Open-Source Advocacy: Equip students with the skills and values to participate in the global open-source movement.
  • Access to Expertise: Gain a communication channel to the brains behind MariaDB.
  • Career Readiness: Prepare students for future job opportunities by teaching relevant technologies and participating hands-on in an open-source community.
  • Research and Collaboration: Support researchers to use and contribute to the MariaDB ecosystem.

Offering for Students

For students, the MariaDB for Universities Program provides: 

  • Fast Learning of RDBMSes and SQL: Complementary, real-world training materials connecting database theory with practice (see uni.mariadb.org).
  • Open source, feature complete RDBMS: Full access to a performant, easy to use relational DBMS with all core features from ACID transactions to nearest-neighbour Vector Search.
  • Solid Skill Set: Ability to build data persistence into state of the art applications – from scratch, with AI, using AI.
  • Career Advancement: Opportunities to contribute to open source in a mentored structure, based on our experience as Google Summer of Code mentors for over 10 years.

How We Deliver

  • We offer open source lecture materials 
  • Select MariaDB employees can, on agreement, act as guest lectures at your institution on-site or remotely
  • We mentor hackathon style code contribution events, based on earlier hackathon experiences, facilitating contributions to
    • integration contributions (e.g. improvements to the MariaDB Jupyter Kernel, a playground for new ways to learn, test, and teach MariaDB) and 
    • innovation contributions (reference implementations, use cases).
    • core MariaDB Server code, for which we guide you to find appropriate items at jira.mariadb.org/
  • We review and merge your contributions to MariaDB in the form of code, documentation, and lecture material 

MariaDB Foundation Goals

The key values of MariaDB Foundation are adoption, openness, and continuity. We drive our values as part of the MariaDB for Universities Program through:

  • Graduated students having been taught databases using MariaDB Server
  • Contributions to MariaDB Knowledge Base (the reference manual for MariaDB Server)
  • Contributions to the MariaDB for Universities lecture materials
  • Code contributions to MariaDB Server, to integration software, and to innovative public reference implementations and use cases

Apply for Participation

MariaDB for Universities Program is open for participation. The program is currently in Alpha phase, meaning that the first participants will be selected based on individual interactions.

Please contact us at university@mariadb.org and describe your current database curriculum and goals:

  • How are you teaching databases right now? (Number of classes per year, number of students per year.)
  • How are you teaching Open Source right now? (Part of which lecture series?)
  • What are your goals for database tuition? (Students, researchers, other)
  • What database are you teaching with now – e.g. MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MS SQL Server, Oracle Database?

Based on your email, MariaDB Foundation will contact you for a virtual meeting.