[darkchasma]

I've been impressed with Postgres, and still have a sour taste in my mouth over MySql's sale to Oracle. So why would I want to use MariaDB over Postgres? Is there a compelling reason to give it a look?

[nivla]

The main stronghold of MariaDB is the drop in replacement for MySQL. If you already have a well established web app and you are planning on get off the clutches of Oracle, MariaDB is your easy choice. You don't have to make substantial changes or worry about breaking any existing functionality. As for performance, can someone who have used both comment on it? Also anyone knows if any exciting changes coming to MYSQL? Can't believe MySQL still doesn't have support for Json.

[tony_landis]

I am pleased to see that the traditional SQL databases are still advancing. Having used various NoSQL databases, I always miss the declarative nature of SQL.

I have to agree that MariaDB's main stronghold being MySQL drop in. The other MySQL drop in out there is MemSQL, which is closed and they really keep pricing under wraps.

TokuDB is a great engine. I don't think Postgres has a storage engine that matches the benefits TokuDB brings, but other than that I don't see many benefits over Postgres for a new project, but haven't compared the replication features closely.

Migrating a big codebase to Postgres from MySQL can be kind of a pain unless everything wrapped everything in an ORM like sqlalchemy. The main pain point for me in a recent migration was how postgres handles mixed case in table/column names. Most of the function differences between the two are fairly easy to resolve.

Can anyone with experience with JSON in both Postgres and MariaDB make a comparison?

[porker]

> TokuDB is a great engine. I don't think Postgres has a storage engine that matches the benefits TokuDB brings

I have heard about TokuDB but I can't find any good resources to explain why it's so good and what it does differently. Do you know of any? The page on the MariaDB site (linked to from the OP) says very little...

Thanks!

[gngeal]

> I am pleased to see that the traditional SQL databases are still advancing. Having used various NoSQL databases, I always miss the declarative nature of SQL.

And I bet you haven't seen Datalog yet. ;-)

[tony_landis]

Oh I have, and I like it so much that I feel like mentioning all the time. So I was pleased with my self-restraint here ;)

[cinquemb]

Might be off topic, but for anyone interested in porting your data over from MySQL to Postgres, I found this[0] useful from the Postgres docs.

I had to edit it very little to fit how my data was stored, and imported it successfully to work within Django.

[0] https://github.com/lanyrd/mysql-postgresql-converter

[latj]

Not off topic at all, thanks. The only time I've ever heard of people using MariaDB was because they were using MySql. Sure, its a valid reason to pick a technology, but its got to be be one of the worst reasons.

[jdhendrickson]

The replication you get when you combine it with Galera. If postgresql had that I would drop mariadb, but the painless replication and having multiple read write masters is too good to pass up on. Conversely if Mariadb would add the json data types that postgresql has I would probably never think about moving.

[e12e]

For those, like me, that hadn't heard of Galera before, it's a library that ships with(?) mariadb, and is also being developed for postgresql (no release date). Fully open source, and at least on paper, looks great (I have no experience with it):

http://codership.com/products/galera_replication

http://codership.com/products/postgresql_galera

[Keyframe]

There's also Percona's fork of MySQL.

[astrange]

MariaDB incorporates Percona XtraDB.

[Ecio78]

according to this[1] it is not included in the beta version. Having said that, Percona is not only XtraDB

[1] https://mariadb.com/kb/en/about-xtradb/