MySQL and MariaDB variables inflation

Mon, 2016-12-12 21:43 — Shinguz

MySQL is well known and widely spread because of its philosophy of Keep it Simple (KISS).

We recently had the discussion that with newer releases also MySQL and MariaDB relational databases becomes more and more complicated.

One indication for this trend is the number of MySQL server system variables and status variables.

In the following tables and graphs we compare the different releases since MySQL version 4.0:

mysql> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES;
mysql> SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'innodb%';
mysql> SHOW GLOBAL STATUS;
mysql> SHOW GLOBAL STATUS LIKE 'innodb%';

Version	System	IB Sys.	Status	IB Stat.
MySQL 4.0.30	143	22	*133	**0
MySQL 4.1.25	189	26	*164	**0
MySQL 5.0.96	239	36	252	42
MySQL 5.1.73	277	36	291	42
MySQL 5.5.51	317	60	312	47
MySQL 5.6.31	438	120	341	51
MySQL 5.7.15	491	131	353	51
MySQL 8.0.0	488	124	363	51

* Use SHOW STATUS instead.
** Use SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS\G instead.

Version	System	IB Sys.	Status	IB Stat.
MariaDB 5.1.44	354	72	301	44
MariaDB 5.2.10	397	86	324	46
MariaDB 5.5.41	419	103	413	99
MariaDB 10.0.21	537	147	455	95
MariaDB 10.1.18***	589	178	517	127
MariaDB 10.2.2****	586	164	481	96