MariaDB is part of Google Summer of Code 2023

We are excited to announce that this year MariaDB has once again been accepted as a Google Summer of Code organization. With this blog post I want to showcase the projects we’re taking on and wish good luck to our mentees for the summer!

At MariaDB we strongly believe in growing Open Source and we encourage new developers to contribute. Google Summer of Code allows us to have dedicated contributors focus on a project for a few months, knowing the costs are covered. We at MariaDB can then just focus on the core aspects – writing code and growing our community.

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.