Distributed SQL is a new take on relational databases, solving problems organisations have struggled with for decades.
Compounded by a world that is more connected than ever before, organisations 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.
“While distributed SQL benefits are undeniable, it used to force you to make a database decision,” Michael Howard, CEO at MariaDB plc, said. “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.
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.
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.
MariaDB is a new-generation cloud database company whose products are used by companies big and small, reaching more than a billion users through Linux distributions, and have been downloaded over one billion times. Deployed in minutes and maintained with ease leveraging cloud automation, our database products are engineered to support any workload, any cloud and any scale – all while saving up to 90 per cent of proprietary database costs.
