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MariaDB or MySQL, that is the question
Fri, 2021-03-26 16:23 — Shinguz
Many customers come to us and ask us whether to use MariaDB or MySQL. The answer is not so simple. FromDual is a neutral and vendor independent MariaDB/MySQL consulting company. So we should not have (in the meaning of neutral) a clear preference. For us internally we have chosen our strategy according to some clearly defined criteria. But what we have chosen for us is not necessarily the right choice for you.
So what we want to show you here is a tool which helps you to choose the right strategy for your own company or situation. In this case a tool to use is the decision matrix [ 1 ]. We tried to build such a decision matrix for your choice between MariaDB and MySQL. You can fill in your ratings into the table and decide yourself:
| Criteria | K.O.* | Factor***** | MySQL** | MariaDB** |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Query Cache*** | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Ease of use | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Security | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Major Release series stability | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Feature 1 implementation | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Feature 2 implementation | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Feature 3 implementation | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Storage Engines (MyISAM, ColumnStore, Spider) | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Distribution support | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Supplier repository | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Included in O/S Support | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Enterprise Subscription type**** | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Enterprise Subscription pricing | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Enterprise Subscription quality | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Quality Assurance of software vendor | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Application software vendor support | ☑ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Uniform software stack | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Different supplier strategy | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Software development | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| License (GPL, proprietary) | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Mainstream | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Cluster integration | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Trust in software vendor | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| One vendor support | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Migration to this solution | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Integration into site license | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Long term trust into vendor | ☐ | 1 | ... | ... |
| Total | ---- | ---- | =sum(d2:d27) | =sum(e2:e27) |
* A K.O. criteria means that the solution or product is out of the game if it does not meet this criteria at all. For example if you need hard real time behaviour for the application and one of the chosen solutions / products does not meet this requirement this solution / product is out of the game. Side note: Neither MariaDB nor MySQL satisfy hard real time requirements!
** In this column you can rate the criteria for example from 0..4. 0 means does absolutely not meet criteria, 1 to 4 means a little to perfect.
*** Does NOT exist any more in MySQL 8.
**** MariaDB per instance (mysqld), MySQL per physical machine (not VM!)
***** With the Factor you can weight a Criteria. For example if QA is important for you, you can give this criteria a higher weight.
If you find/have some more criteria which should be listed in the matrix please let us know!
Literature
- 1 Decision matrix / Entscheidungsmatrix
- Shinguz's blog
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