Start MariaDB in K8s

This is the first in a series of blogs explaining how to use MariaDB in Kubernetes (K8s), as well as explaining some important concepts of K8s and of MariaDB.

This blog explains how to start MariaDB as a stateless application in K8s using the CLI and explores different commands you can run on your CLI.

The prerequisites are that you have installed kubectl (which will also install Docker runtime) and minikube (local K8s).

Let’s first start the minikube

$ minikube start && kubectl get nodes
NAME STATUS ROLES AGE VERSION
minikube Ready control-plane,master 104d v1.22.2

The Pod is a K8s resource and the smallest unit in K8s.

10.7 preview feature JSON Histograms

MariaDB has had support for histograms as part of Engine Independent Table Statistics since 10.0. As part of Google Summer of Code (MDEV-21130), Michael Okoko, together with his mentor Sergey Petrunia, have implemented a new format (using JSON) for histograms that significantly improves the accuracy and flexibility of histograms. For those just interested in the feature details, you can skip to the “New format”, however if one is unfamiliar with the purpose of histograms, read on.

Why statistics are needed

Histograms are important for queries where the WHERE clause uses columns that are not indexed.

Webinar: AI in MariaDB with MindsDB

MindsDB is an AutoML framework that lets software engineers do machine learning, without having to go through the whole data science pipeline. Additionally, MindsDB has done a seamless integration with MariaDB, by making use of the Connect Storage Engine.

If you want to learn more about how you can do AI straight from inside MariaDB, register for the webinar on 18th of May 16:00 GMT. MariaDB Foundation, together with MindsDB will cover the following topics in detail:

  • Why AI inside the database makes sense
  • How MariaDB is built to facilitate AI integrations.

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.

A GSoC internship with the MariaDB Foundation

Introduction

Hi, my name is Kartik Soneji, and I am a second year student at Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, Mumbai. I have been programming since the age of 13. I started out with Java, then learnt a little C++ before diving head first into web development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I also programmed a bit in Python and Rust to see what all the hype was about.

My primary motivation to contribute to the open source community is because I strongly believe in the idea that software is free, to copy, modify and study.

FOSDEM 2020: Some memories and todos

FOSDEM gives energy. FOSDEM gives ideas. FOSDEM opens up opportunities, FOSDEM allows you to connect with old friends and colleagues. Hence, no big surprise that MariaDB Foundation attended FOSDEM, in order to promote Open Source and to get ourselves closer to the community.

FOSDEM logo

Starting from a pre-FOSDEM dinner with Member of the European Parliament Nils Torvalds, over Open Source Diva Danese Cooper’s keynote about “Open Source is Art”, to the MySQL, MariaDB and Friends Devroom and Sunday’s MariaDB Day, concluding with OpenForum Europe’s meeting on Monday, my previous weekend was packed with encounters, discussions, and ideas around Open Source.

MariaDB Day Brussels 02.02.2020 – Introducing speakers – Sveta Smirnova on How to Avoid Pitfalls in Schema Upgrade with Galera

Galera Cluster for MySQL is a 100% synchronized cluster in regards to data modification operations (DML). It is ensured by the optimistic locking model and ability to rollback a transaction, which cannot be applied on all nodes. However, schema changes (DDL operations) are not transactional in MySQL, which adds complexity when you need to perform an upgrade or change schema of the database.
Changes made by DDL may affect results of the queries. Therefore all modifications must replicate on all nodes prior next data access. For operations which run momentarily it can be easily achieved, but schema changes may take hours to apply.