MariaDB: the new MySQL? Interview with MySQL main author

Frankfurt/San Francisco, September 29, 2011 - Roberto V. Zicari, editor of ODBMS.org, interviewed for the ODBMS Industry Watch Blog Michael "Monty" Widenius, the main author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database and a founding member of the MySQL AB company.

Roberto asked Monty a number of questions related to MariaDB, a branch of the MySQL code base, that Monty is working on since 2009 when he left Sun Microsystems.

"I want to ensure that the MySQL code base (under the name of MariaDB) will survive as open source, in spite of what Oracle may do. As Oracle is now moving away from Open Source to Open Core it was in hindsight the right thing to do!" comments Michael "Monty" Widenius.

MariaDB is now at release 5.3

"5.3 is where we have put most of our development efforts, especially in the optimizer area and replication" says "Monty" Widenius.

"What we do expect with 5.3 is that also people that need a more flexible SQL will start using MariaDB thanks to the new 'no-sql' features we have added like handler socket and dynamic columns. Dynamic columns allows you to have a different set of columns for every row in a table" adds "Monty" Widenius.

For the future plan, "Monty" Widenius explains: "We are just now working on a the last cleanups so that we can release MariaDB 5.5. This will include everything in MariaDB 5.3, MySQL 5.5 and also most of the closed source features that is in MySQL 5.5 Enterprise"

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