Releasing Connector/Node.js – What Does it MEAN?

Some in the Node.js development community might have been surprised by today’s announcement of the release of MariaDB Connector/Node.js.  People have been connecting Node.js to MariaDB for years – what’s the big deal?  This is an important announcement for the MariaDB community and I wanted to explain why.

One of MariaDB’s greatest strengths has always been it’s accessibility and ease-of-use across a wide range of programming languages and stacks.  Architects and developers selecting MariaDB for their projects know that future changes to their application stack will not require rethinking their database selection.  Whether it is C, C++, Java/JDBC, ODBC, .Net, Python, PHP or a host of other languages, developers can find the driver that they need and focus on building the applications that bring value to their businesses.

Many of these language drivers are community maintained and built, and MariaDB is grateful that talented and passionate contributors around the world are helping to bring MariaDB to more developers.  However, there is a set of language connectors that MariaDB directly builds, maintains and releases. For our Enterprise customers who want support that extends into the language drivers, it is important that MariaDB provides software that has been through our rigorous release cycle.  When we release these drivers they benefit from planning that ensures they are taking advantage of the latest MariaDB features, from detailed testing that guarantees a stable release, and ongoing access to the engineers behind that enables us to maintain and enhance the drivers moving forward. And, of course, our drivers are open source, with the new Node.js connector and our other language connectors released under the LGPL v2.1 license so that they can be freely embedded in your application code.

Today’s announcement of the MariaDB Connector/Node.js driver’s impending General Availability reflects the growing importance of Node.js to our customers and users. The 2018 Node.js User Survey reported that 43% of Node.js users were engaged with enterprise projects.  With organizations turning to Node.js more and more often for critical applications, we want to ensure that the entire stack is properly supported and that users and customers are getting the best experience out of MariaDB.

I hope you will join me for next week’s webinar: Build Node.js Apps with a Relational Database.  If you can’t wait to get started, you can download the MariaDB Connector/Node.js and have a look at the release notes.