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I was asked to check Mariadb as Centos does not provider MySQL 5.5 for the moment. I have read that xtradb servers as a drop in for innodb.

What are the advantages of using one or the other because if they were equal, they would not have been called the same name?

Do you think that I should switch to Mariadb? What kind of problems I might face in the future because of updates if any.

I know that the founder of MySQL is behind Mariadb, and Oracle is managing MySQL now. It seems a bit tricky as a tricky decision.

Thank you in advance for your opinion,

Update, I asked the question here, because google did not display any recent updates. Only some old comparisons published prior to 2012

thedethfox
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    you can always compile mysql yourself. just because it's "not in centos" doesn't mean it's utterly unavailable. – Marc B Aug 20 '12 at 14:07
  • I know but I don't want to do that way yet? Was also woundring if there are advantages of using Maria as db instead of MySQL. I also that MySQL has improved alot recently. – thedethfox Aug 20 '12 at 14:11
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    For advantages of XtraDB over regular mysql, check this FAQ: http://www.percona.com/software/percona-server/faq/ – Pritam Barhate Aug 20 '12 at 14:38

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XtraDB is InnoDB with several patches added. The patches themselves stem from Google, Facebook and others. XtraDB is maintained by Percona and the heart of Percona Server.

You may think of Percona as a distributor who collects, coordinates and maintains patches and distributes an enhanced version of the MySQL server.

A feature comparison between stock MySQL and Percona Server can be seen here:

http://www.percona.com/software/percona-server/feature-comparison

The XtraDB engine is also shipped as default InnoDB implementation in MariaDB. MariaDB includes also stock InnoDB as pluggable storage engine, so you can chose.

Benchmarks show that XtraDB scales better on massively parallel architectures and especially XtraDB is much better suited for write-heavy workload. The InnoDB engine in MySQL 5.6 will incorporate many of the features and advantages that have so far been available in XtraDB only.

Kijewski
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Axel
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    Percona actually did quite a lot of development on their own, so they're not just a 'distributor' – Mchl Aug 20 '12 at 14:13
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    Now we're in 2017, MariaDB 10.2 chose to ship InnoDB again as default engine, as they noted InnoDB incorporated most of the performance improvements of XtraDB. See https://mariadb.com/kb/en/why-does-mariadb-102-use-innodb-instead-of-xtradb/ – Dereckson Nov 07 '17 at 15:55
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xtradb is a fork of innodb (mariadb also provides an original copy of innodb ), but patches with several improvements (among others also the Google and Facebook patches which never had been accepted into MySQL before)

alien
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  • Thumbs up for that but Oracle has been working on MySQL and they have done a create job in MySQL 5.5. After all every Mariadb version is based on a MySQL release right? My questions is what makes Maria and xtradb better than the latest release of MySQL? – thedethfox Aug 20 '12 at 14:13
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    http://kb.askmonty.org/en/mariadb-versus-mysql-features/ for MariaDB features . Axel had a link to XtraDB features in his answer. – Vladislav Vaintroub Aug 20 '12 at 16:02
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    For me using MariaDB was the solution to all my problems, slow information_schema is one biggy. Having partitioned tables and xtraDB have saved me from going bankrupt (truly). Insert heavy apps benefit enormously. Bugs left unfixed (opened them 2 years ago), in mariaDb it all worked. Having Aria table format is also a big benefit imho. I use them everywhere. – Glenn Plas Dec 05 '12 at 10:15