MariaDB

MariaDB¹ is a relational database that originated as a fork of MySQL (by its original creators) due to worries after Oracle took over the product. Originally, MariaDB aimed for drop-in compatability with MySQL. Even though that’s no longer the case, it retains very good compatability — software developed for MySQL generally works well with MariaDB and vice versa.

Comparison

Each of the requirements is scored on a scale from 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good).

Data integrity

Score: 5. MariaDB provides strong transaction support and is ACID-compliant. Relations can be defined between tables to ensure that data in different tables is consistent.

Handling necessary data

Score: 5. There should be no problems in handling millions of items.

JavaScript support

Score: 4. There is an official MariaDB connector available. In addition, it is supported by many third-party libraries² with different features (in part due to its compatability with MySQL).

Performance

Score: 3. MariaDB can handle large numbers of requests. Benchmarks³⁴⁵ show that it does lag behind PostgrSQL in speed, although it performs better than its direct competitor MySQL.

Query support

Score 4. Although MariaDB works with SQL, it misses some of the more advanced features that PostgreSQL supports.

Scalability

Score: 2. On its own, MariaDB supports read replicas to increase the request capacity of the database. Within the MariaDB platform, there are additional products that can add further scaling support.