Are web developers really migrating from MySQL to MariaDB?

[renatov]

Hi guys, I've been following some discussions in Linux forums about migrating from MySQL to MariaDB. Linux community seems very enthusiastic about this migration and some distros already set MariaDB as their default SQL database, for example, OpenSUSE 13.1.

 

But what do you, web developers, think about this? Overall, are web developers really planning to migrate from MySQL to MariaDB? Do you think MariaDB will be more used than MySQL in the near future?

[Philip]

I've migrated most of my database to either Percona or, more recently, MariaDB. 

[renatov]

Hi Phailip, thanks for your reply. Could you please tell why did you migrate from MySQL to these other databases?

[gizmola]

Renatov,

 

For some people, the concern about what might happen to the mysql license is very important. I am not in that camp at present, and don't despise Oracle and everything it stands for on principle. It's going into the 4th year since Oracle bought Sun, and the sky has not fallen, nor has Oracle stopped enhancing it, or pulled it off the market, or closed sourced it. I'm sure they are much more concerned with MongoDB than they are with alternatives to MySQL. Still it's no surprise that people would be very interested in what the mysql founder is doing with his fork and embrace that. So it's no surprise that MariaDB is default in some distributions, although I don't think a relational database should be the default in a distribution in the first place.

 

For many people, there is no noticeable difference between the two, and have more in common in their lineage than differences. I personally never use mysql/myisam, and instead use the innodb engine when I use mysql. At this juncture there is a choice you have to make with mariadb -- do you utilize the Xtradb (innodb fork) or innodb as an engine. It's interesting looking at, but I'm not sure that there's any huge advantage to mariadb w/innodb or xtradb for that matter, but perhaps for some uses there might be.

 

 

There may in some cases be performance improvements in MariaDB and there are some interesting edge-case plugins that exist for it, none of which I see as essential.

 

A really good summary exists here: http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/mariadb-vs-mysql-a-comparison/

 

With that said, there is probably a lot about mysql you really want to learn, before you start concerning yourself with this issue.

 

In conclusion, there is no real difference from the client/php perspective between the two right now.

[renatov]

It's nice to see this point of view. According to the article you suggested, MariaDB and MySQL are very similar RDBMS and it seems that the most important difference that is encouraging people to migrate is the license. I read another article that said Oracle has an agreement of providing a dual licensing (one open source and another commercial) to MySQL only until 2015. After that, it's totally up to Oracle what to do with MySQL. For now I'm not too concerned about all this because I'm still learning and even though I won't use MySQL forever, after learning some fundamental SQL manipulation concepts it will be easy to learn another RDBMS tool. But I confess I got a bit troubled by all these things I read. I mean, what if I do some jobs using MySQL now and withing a few years this tool is no longer avaliable, or force me to pay in order to use it, or become a very bad product that we won't be able to fork ? Maybe that's why people are migrating now, because they are being cautious and if they already start migrating, they can do it gradually.

 

Why do you say that a relational database shouldn't be the default database for a Linux distro? What do you think would be better, and why?

Edited March 1, 2014 by renatov

[gizmola]

I think that people will move rapidly to one of the forks if Oracle makes MySQL close source. That would be a mistake, and one that doesn't really make sense, since they already have thier flagship Oracle database product and continue to make huge revenue with that.

 

Migration shouldn't be a huge problem, although it certainly could be disruptive to a production company with a large dataset.

 

As for having a relational database "default" that suggests that a relational database ought to be installed by default in your linux distro. I don't think there's any reason for that -- people can install an RDMBS if they need one easily enough, and when they do need one, that should be left up to the package providers to support.

 

I far prefer not having a lot of things preinstalled on a server, so that I don't have to worry about uninstalling things I don't need.

[renatov]

Oh, now I understand your point. I wasn't clear when I said MariaDB is the default DB in OpenSUSE. It doesn't come pre-installed. What I tryed to mention is that when you specifically try to install MySQL, OpenSUSE installs MariaDB instead. All metapackages that previously installed MySQL now install MariaDB. If you insist on using MySQL, like I did (for learning purposes), you must uninstall MariaDB, manually remove its tables and then install the mysql communit server package.

Edited March 5, 2014 by renatov