Preface

What is MariaDB? If you bought this book, it is assumed that you already know a bit; anyways, a quick reminder and a short introduction will help us understand certain things.

MariaDB is a fork (drop-in replacement) of MySQL. MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008. Then, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009 with MySQL included.

For several reasons, Michael "Monty" Widenius (founder of MySQL) decided to fork MySQL and to create a company for it called Monty Program AB; that's how MariaDB was born (Maria is the name of the second daughter of Michael Widenius).

In December 2012, the MariaDB foundation was brought into existence to avoid any company acquisition like what had happened in the past for MySQL.

SkySQL is a company formed of ex-MySQL executives and investors who deliver services around MySQL/MariaDB. In April 2013, SkySQL and Monty Program AB were merged, because for a company to switch to MariaDB without support was problematic. But since the merge, it's been possible.

MariaDB has new interesting features, better testing, performance improvements, and bug fixes that unfortunately are not available in MySQL. For example, some optimizations come from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

Please remember that MariaDB is a full open source project and you're welcome to contribute.