MariaDB 10.3-alpha released

While most of the MariaDB developers have been working hard on getting MariaDB 10.2 out as GA, a small team, including me, has been working on the next release, MariaDB 10.3.

The theme of MariaDB 10.2 is complex operations, like window functions, common table expressions, JSON functions, the theme of MariaDB 10.3 is compatibility.

Compatibility refers to functionality that exist in other databases but have been missing in MariaDB:

• Enhanced ORACLE compatibility mode (PL/SQL compatibility)
• INTERSECT and EXCEPT
• SEQUENCE support
  • CREATE SEQUENCE
  • DROP SEQUENCE
  • NEXT VALUE FOR
  • PREVIOUS VALUE FOR
• ROW data type for stored routine variables
• TYPE OF and ROW TYPE OF anchored data types for stored routine variables
• Cursors with parameters
• SELECT FOR UPDATE WAIT
• DDL FAST FAIL

In MariaDB 10.2 ORACLE mode was limited to removing MariaDB specific options in SHOW CREATE TABLE, SHOW CREATE VIEW and setting SQL_MODE to "PIPES_AS_CONCAT, ANSI_QUOTES, IGNORE_SPACE, ORACLE, NO_KEY_OPTIONS, NO_TABLE_OPTIONS, NO_FIELD_OPTIONS, NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER".

In MariaDB 10.3, SQL_MODE=ORACLE mode allows MariaDB to understand a large subset of Oracle's PL/SQL language. The documentation for what is supported is still lacking, but the interested can find what is supported in the test suite in the "mysql-test/suite/compat/oracle" directory.

If things go as planned, the features we will add to 10.3 prior to beta are:

• Hidden columns
• Full Package support. A package is a schema object that groups logically related PL/SQL data types, items (e.g. variables, cursors, exceptions) and subprograms.
• Aggregate Stored Function
• Server Proxy Protocol
• Update Spider to latest version
• AS OF / temporal tables. This will allow you to access data as it was at a specific point in time.
• Galera 4.0 (depending on Codership)

Most of the above features are already close to be ready (to be added in future Alphas), so I expect that it willl not take many months before we can make a first MariaDB 10.3 beta!

This is in line what was discussed on the MariaDB developer conference in New York one week ago, where most attendees wanted to see new MariaDB releases more often.

MariaDB 10.3 can be downloaded here

Happy testing!