MariaDB plc, at its global user conference OpenWorks 2023, unveiled its vision to bring the power of distributed SQL through its award-winning Xpand database to both the MariaDB/MySQL and PostgreSQL communities.
“Our vision is to take databases to new heights of scale and resilience, in any cloud at a fraction of the cost of competitors,” said Michael Howard, CEO at MariaDB plc. “Xpand gives us the power to do this in SkySQL and broaden its benefits to new communities such as PostgreSQL. With this, we give the ultimate choice to our customers.”
The choice is yours
Distributed SQL is a new take on relational databases, solving problems organizations have struggled with for decades. Compounded by a world that is more connected than ever before, organizations face growing demand from across the globe. Their challenge is to operate their business continuously while also capturing demand when it surges. Xpand is a distributed SQL database built from the ground up to solve these challenges, making our customers unstoppable.
“While distributed SQL’s benefits are undeniable, it used to force you to make a database decision,” continued Howard. “It means you ultimately had to migrate to a distributed SQL database. That didn’t seem right to me. Our next disruptive innovation is about giving options, not forcing a choice.”
At OpenWorks, MariaDB demonstrated how other open source relational databases such as PostgreSQL used with Xpand’s distributed SQL database scales beyond the conventional primary/replica architecture that hits scalability limits quickly. Benchmarks show PostgreSQL with Xpand scaling to 5x the number of users at twice the throughput compared to PostgreSQL on its own and a popular PostgreSQL cloud option.
A tech preview of PostgreSQL with Xpand will be available in SkySQL, as a fully managed database service in a few weeks.
Geospatial: a database and API-driven approach
Traditional geospatial solutions took a database-centric approach or didn’t adopt open standard APIs, making it very difficult for developers to work with geospatial data. New drones, satellites and sensors means that geospatial or location-based data is growing at unprecedented rates. Storing all this data in databases alone is impossible given the magnitude of the problem and increasing resolution of images. MariaDB Geospatial, based on an acquisition made last year, is a developer-first, API-driven solution that embraces open standard interfaces for web mapping and geospatial queries. It combines vector storage in the database with raster storage in cloud object storage – an approach that doesn’t force a choice.
MariaDB Geospatial is now available on SkySQL as a tech preview.
Cloud backup: on-prem databases and cloud benefits
SkySQL automatically backs up the databases it runs as a service, consistent with other cloud databases. Similar to the recent Observability news announced recently, MariaDB is extending its cloud backup service to databases running on-prem and in other cloud infrastructure. This gives databases not running in cloud services the ability to benefit from them, with backups that can ultimately also be restored in their cloud of choice for a failsafe disaster recovery strategy.
Cloud Backup for remote databases is now available on SkySQL as a tech preview.
To dive more into the details of MariaDB’s announcements, to see demos and hear from customer successes, please join OpenWorks 2023 virtually, taking place live from New York on May 9-10.
