MySQL second loss

Despite being caught by Oracle, the controversy on MySQL never stopped; today, MySQL is still the most popular open source database on the market.

Simple, free, extensible, relatively mature and so has always been the attraction of MySQL, but it is like a rabbit in a tortoise and hare race, because of its own advantages, to slacken, slowing down their own pace, so that each competitor Have the opportunity to catch up, these killer features are no longer attractive (or even reduced to the disadvantaged). Although PostgreSQL has long been regarded as a direct competitor to MySQL, the real real blow to it seems to be more of MariaDB, a product developed by MySQL's predecessor.

MySQL loss in major Linux distributions

Dissatisfied with the increasingly closed and slow updates after MySQL was acquired by Oracle, many Linux distributions have gradually abandoned this popular open source database and moved to MariaDB, including:

Fedora Project: In January 2013, the Fedora Project began collecting users' interest in using MariaDB. And in Fedora 19 in the summer, the Fedora Project has switched to MariaDB as the default choice for dependent software.

Slackware Linux: On March 23, 2013, Slackware Linux, the oldest Linux distribution, also announced the use of MariaDB instead of MySQL because the MariaDB community is more dynamic and more willing to work with the open source community.

Arch Linux: On March 25, 2013, Arch Linux issued a notice using MariaDB instead of MySQL and completing the conversion in less than one month. For a variety of reasons, the update needs to be done manually.

Red Hat: In June 2013, Red Hat announced that Enterprise Edition RHEL 7 will replace MySQL with MariaDB. Earlier this year, Red Hat's community distribution, Fedora, announced the switch from MySQL to MariaDB.

These are some incomplete statistics (such as openSUSE, etc.), and we also believe that similar changes will appear in more Linux distributions as MariaDB gets more recognition.

MySQL in the heavyweight loss in the company

· Apple: Apple abandoned MySQL after its acquisition by Oracle in 2011. Of course, they chose PostgreSQL, here had to admire the high-level vision of Apple.

Wikipedia: At the end of 2012, Wikipedia released a test that migrated a slave from the MySQL 5.1+ Facebook patchset to MariaDB 5.5.28. A comprehensive test found MariaDB's query efficiency increased 3% -15%, an average increase of 8%, during which no anomalies occurred; in qp, the throughput increased by 2% -10%. Almost six months later, Wikipedia has officially completed its migration.

Internet giant Google's defection

As the most popular open source database, MySQL is by no means nameless - in addition to Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter also make heavy use of MySQL, have released their own MySQL branch / patch set, and for many companies. However, According Theregister, foreign media, search giant Google is committed to the MySQL to MariaDB migration, away from the open source database supported by Oracle:

The news comes from the Extremely Large Databases meeting at Stanford on the 11th, a week after Google assigned an engineer to the MariaDB Foundation. Although the news is not Google's official release, but based on Google's senior systems engineer Jeremy Cole on the status of the MySQL ecosystem show.

It is learned that, in order to make MariaDB more effective, Google is committed to its upgrade and repair - to migrate tens of thousands of Google's MySQL instance. Cole said:

The current major version of MySQL 5.1 has been unable to match the company's pace, so we moved to MariaDB 10.1.

According to SkySQL (MariaDB's combined company name, most employees are made of MySQL's old components, click for more details) Patrik Sallner also revealed that Google had started collaborations with the MariaDB Foundation earlier this year:

They migrated many of their previous databases running on MySQL to MariaDB, and we've worked with them to develop features that will help with this migration. For us, this is a very good reference.

Cole also revealed that the migration will involve tens of thousands of MySQL server, the current two companies are committed MariaDB reliability and characterization of research and development.

At the same time, Google will convert all MySQL servers to MariaDB. Regardless of Oracle's motivation or not, through this move, Google will completely eliminate its dependence on technology. The open source database (heavily modified) has been heavily used at Google since MySQL 4.0, the most recent being 5.1. According to Cole, MariaDB 10.0 is roughly equivalent to the MySQL 5.6 books, so the workload is not large. When asked why MariaDB was chosen as a MySQL replacement, Cole explains:

In my opinion, both databases have much of the same features except for the individual features and implementation methods. But in philosophy, there are many differences. I really want to see MySQL have a separate community, but under the rule of Oracle is obviously impossible, and the future of MariaDB there is too much possible.

Google's large-scale MariaDB may start from Chocolate Factory to reduce developers' reliance on MySQL, which also erodes the power of the open-source Oracle database ecosystem.

Write in the end

Based on Google's position in the minds of developers, the impact of this move on MySQL can be imagined. Although we can not understand Oracle's initial acquisition of MySQL motivation, but it can be concluded that the current situation is definitely not the database giant want to see. In the future, MySQL's status may be threatened by more database management systems, but the immediate "fatal blow" is apparently MariaDB!