MariaDB 12.1 Changes & Improvements

MariaDB 12.1 is a rolling release. It is an evolution of MariaDB 12.0 with several entirely new features.

New Features

Segmented key cache for Aria storage engine (MDEV-24)
- aria_pagecache_segments system variable
MDL scalability improvements (MDEV-19749)
Parallel replication for Galera replicas (MDEV-20065)
Buffered logging for audit plugin (MDEV-34680)
Faster vector distance calculations via extrapolation (MDEV-36205)

caching_sha2_password plugin (MDEV-9804)
( + ) for outer join syntax (MDEV-13817)
Add semisynchronous replication variable, rpl_semi_sync_master_wait_for_slave_count (MDEV-18983)
Associative arrays: DECLARE TYPE .. TABLE OF .. INDEX BY (MDEV-34319)
DROP USER will now by default issue a warning if the user has active sessions, or fail in Oracle mode (MDEV-35617)
Optimizer hints: [NO_]JOIN_INDEX, [NO_]GROUP_INDEX, [NO_]ORDER_INDEX, [NO_]INDEX (MDEV-35856)
Optimizer hints: [NO_]SPLIT_MATERIALIZED (MDEV-36092)
Optimizer hints: [NO_]DERIVED_CONDITION_PUSHDOWN, [NO_]MERGE (MDEV-36106)

Retry applying of write sets on galera nodes (MDEV-36077)
mariadb-dump now supports wildcards with the -L or --wildcards option (MDEV-21376)
Per-table unique FOREIGN KEY constraint names (MDEV-28933)
Remove depth limit from JSON functions (MDEV-32854)
Support for functional indexes in GROUP/ORDER BY (MDEV-36132)
Include definitions of tables and views in the optimizer trace (MDEV-36483)
- optimizer_record_context system variable.