See also MariaDB vs MySQL - Features
Until MariaDB 5.5, MariaDB versions functioned as a "drop-in replacement" for the equivalent MySQL version, with some limitations. From MariaDB 10.0, it is usually still very easy to upgrade from MySQL.
MariaDB's data files are generally binary compatible with those from the equivalent MySQL version.
All filenames and paths are generally the same.
Data and table definition files (.frm) files are binary compatible.
See note below for an incompatibility with views!
MariaDB's client protocol is binary compatible with MySQL's client protocol.
All client APIs and structs are identical.
All ports and sockets are generally the same.
All MySQL connectors (PHP, Perl, Python, Java, .NET, MyODBC, Ruby, MySQL C connector etc) work unchanged with MariaDB.
This means that for many cases, you can just uninstall MySQL and and you are good to go. There is not generally any need to convert any data files.
However, you must still run to finish the upgrade. This is needed to ensure that your mysql privilege and event tables are updated with the new fields MariaDB uses.
That said, MariaDB has a lot of that are not in MySQL. You can find the feature set for the different MariaDB versions on the page.
, , and function as limited drop-in replacements for MySQL 5.7, as far as is concerned. However, the implementation differences continue to grow in each new MariaDB version.
and function as limited drop-in replacements for MySQL 5.6, as far as is concerned. However, there are some implementation differences in some features.
functions as a drop-in replacement for MySQL 5.5.
, , and function as drop-in replacements for MySQL 5.1.
See .
See for details.
See for details.
See for details.
See for details.
See for details.
For unmaintained versions, see:
and above does not support MySQL 5.7's packed JSON objects. MariaDB follows the SQL standard and stores the JSON as a normal TEXT/BLOB. If you want to replicate JSON columns from MySQL to MariaDB, you should store JSON objects in MySQL in a TEXT column or use statement based replication. If you are using JSON columns and want to upgrade to MariaDB, you can either convert the JSON columns to TEXT or use to copy these tables to MariaDB. In MySQL, JSON is compared according to json values. In MariaDB JSON strings are normal strings and compared as strings.
's InnoDB encryption is implemented differently than MySQL 5.7's InnoDB encryption.
does not support the ngram and MeCab full-text parser plugins - , .
MySQL does not support MariaDB's .
All MySQL binaries (mysqld, etc.) give a warning if one uses a prefix of an option (such as --big-table instead of --big-tables). MariaDB binaries work in the same way as most other Unix commands and don't give warnings when using unique prefixes.
MariaDB GTID is not compatible with MySQL 5.6. This means that one can't have MySQL 5.6 as a slave for . However can be a slave of MySQL 5.6 or any earlier MySQL/MariaDB version. Note that MariaDB and MySQL also have different
Views with definition ALGORITHM=MERGE or ALGORITHM=TEMPTABLE got accidentally swapped between MariaDB and MySQL! You have to re-create views created with either of these definitions!
also gives warnings for duplicate key errors. You can turn this off by setting OLD_MODE=NO_DUP_KEY_WARNINGS_WITH_IGNORE (see ).
Before , X'HHHH', the standard SQL syntax for binary string literals, erroneously worked in the same way as 0xHHHH, which could work as a number or string depending on the context. In 5.5.31 this was fixed to behave as a string in all contexts (and never as a number), introducing an incompatibility with previous versions of MariaDB, and all versions of MySQL. See
Views with definition ALGORITHM=MERGE or ALGORITHM=TEMPTABLE got accidentally swapped between and ! You have to re-create views created with either of these definitions!
A few error messages related to wrong conversions are different as MariaDB provides more information in the message about what went wrong.
Error numbers for MariaDB-specific errors have been moved to start from 1900 so as not to conflict with MySQL errors.
Microseconds now work in all contexts; MySQL, in some contexts, lost the microsecond part from datetime and time.
The list is the same as between and MySQL 5.1, with one addition:
A new value was added:IGNORE_BAD_TABLE_OPTIONS. If it is not set, using a table,
field, or index attribute (option) that is not supported by the chosen storage engine will cause an error. This change might cause warnings in the error log about incorrectly defined tables from the mysql database, fix that with .
For all practical purposes, is a drop in replacement for and MySQL 5.1.
In some few cases MariaDB has to be incompatible to allow MariaDB to provide more and better information than MySQL.
Here is the list of all known user level incompatibilities you may see when using instead of MySQL 5.1.
The installation package names start with MariaDB instead of MySQL.
Timings may be different as MariaDB is in many cases faster than MySQL.
mysqld in MariaDB also reads the [mariadb] sections of your
my.cnf files.
You can't use a binary only storage engine library with MariaDB if it's not compiled for exactly the same MariaDB version. (This is because the server internal structure THD is different between MySQL and MariaDB. This is common also between different MySQL versions). This should not be a problem as most people don't load new storage engines and MariaDB comes with
If you are using any of the following options in your /etc/my.cnf or othermy.cnf file you should remove them. This is also true for MySQL 5.1 or newer:
skip-bdb
If you uninstalled a MySQL RPM to install MariaDB, note that the MySQL RPM on uninstall renames /etc/my.cnf to /etc/my.cnf.rpmsave.
After installing MariaDB you should do the following to restore your old configuration options:
A MySQL client API is able to connect to MariaDB using MySQL-Proxy but a MariaDB client API will receive progress reporting information that MySQL-Proxy does not implement, to get full compatibility in all case just disable progress reporting on the client or server side.
Another option is to use the , that works with both MySQL and MariaDB.
There are some that you should be aware of (a bug in how the old PHP5 client checks library compatibility).
MariaDB 10.1 does not support multiple triggers for a table - MDEV-6112. This is fixed in MariaDB 10.2
MariaDB 10.1 does not support for InnoDB.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's “native” InnoDB partitioning handler. Fixed in MariaDB 10.6.15.
MariaDB does not support MySQL 5.7's X protocol.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support the use of multiple triggers of the same type for a table. This feature was introduced in MariaDB 10.2.2.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's transportable tablespaces for partitioned InnoDB tables. ALTER TABLE ... {DISCARD|IMPORT} PARTITION is not supported. For a workaround see the following blog post.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's online undo tablespace truncation. However, this feature was added to MariaDB 10.2.
MySQL 5.7 features a new implementation of the performance_schema and a sys schema wrapper. These are not yet supported in MariaDB.
MySQL 5.7 adds multi-source replication and replication channels. was added to MariaDB previously, in MariaDB 10.0, and uses a different syntax.
MySQL 5.7 adds group replication. This feature is incompatible with MariaDB's galera-cluster replication.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's, ACCOUNT LOCK/UNLOCK synax for CREATE USER and ALTER USER statements.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's ALTER TABLE...RENAME INDEX statements.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's STACKED operation for statements.
MariaDB 10.1 does not support MySQL 5.7's {WITH|WITHOUT} VALIDATION syntax for ALTER TABLE.. EXCHANGE PARTITION statements.
MariaDB does not support the optional init_vector argument for and or the block_encryption_mode variable - MDEV-9069
MariaDB does not support the --initialize option. Use instead. - MDEV-19010
Also see Incompatibilities between MariaDB 10.0 and MySQL 5.6.
Also see a detailed breakdown of System variable differences between MariaDB 10.1and MySQL 5.7.
MariaDB 10.0 is not supported in MySQL 5.6.
To make CREATE TABLE ... SELECT work the same way in statement based and row based replication it's by default executed as on the slave. One benefit of this is that if the slave dies in the middle of CREATE ... SELECT it will be able to continue.
One can use the variable to specify how CREATE TABLE and DROP TABLE is replicated.
See also a detailed breakdown of System variable differences between MariaDB 10.0 and MySQL 5.6.
MySQL 5.6 has enabled by default. For performance reasons MariaDB 10.0 has it disabled by default. You can enable it by starting mysqld with the option --performance-schema.
MariaDB 10.0 does not support the MySQL Memcached plugin. However, data stored using memcached can be retrieved because the data is stored as InnoDB tables. MariaDB is able to start successfully with an error message of not being able to find libmemcached.so library.
Users created with MySQL's SHA256 password algorithm cannot be used in MariaDB 10.0 as MariaDB does not include MySQL's sha256_password plugin.
MariaDB 10.0 does not support delayed replication - MDEV-7145.
Also see a detailed breakdown of System variable differences between MariaDB 10.0 and MySQL 5.6.
The low-level temporal format used by TIME, DATETIME and TIMESTAMP is different in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 10.0. (In MariaDB 10.1, the MySQL implementation is used by default - see .)
MariaDB implements some changes in the SQL query optimizer over what's available in MySQL. This can result in statements showing different plans.
MySQL delayed replication, (through MASTER_DELAY), is not supported in MariaDB 10.0, it was implemented in MariaDB 10.2.5
MariaDB does not support the optional init_vector argument for and or the block_encryption_mode variable - MDEV-9069
MariaDB are not supported by MySQL.
MariaDB are not supported by MySQL.
MariaDB's is not supported by MySQL.
MariaDB's is not supported by MySQL.
As of MariaDB 5.5.35, adheres to the SQL standard and returns a result from 0 to 23. In MySQL, and earlier versions of MariaDB, the result can be greater than 23.
See also a detailed breakdown of System variable differences between MariaDB 5.5 and MySQL 5.5.
(constant-date-string) returns a timestamp with 6 decimals in MariaDB while MySQL returns it without a decimal. This can cause a problem if you are using UNIX_TIMESTAMP() as a partitioning function. You can fix this by using (UNIX_TIMESTAMP(..)) or changing the date string to a date number, like 20080101000000.
MariaDB performs stricter checking of date, datetime and timestamp values. For example ('x') now returns NULL instead of 0.
The old --maria- startup options are removed. You should use
the --aria- prefix instead. (MariaDB 5.2 supports both --maria-
and --aria-)
has an extra Progress column
which shows progress for some commands. You can disable it by
starting mysqld with either --old-mode=NO_PROGRESS_INFO or with the --old flag (see ).
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PROCESSLIST has three new columns for progress
reporting: STAGE, MAX_STAGE, and PROGRESS.
which start with /*M!
or /*M!##### are executed.
If you use (which means any number of connections) when starting mysqld, you can't change the global variable anymore while mysqld remains running. This is because when mysqld is started with max_user_connections=0 it does not allocate counting
structures (which also involve a mutex for each connection). This would lead to wrong counters if you later changed the variable. If you want to be able to change this variable at runtime, set it to a high value at startup.
You can set max_user_connections (both the global variable and the GRANT option) to -1 to stop users from connecting to the server. The global max_user_connections variable does not affect users with the SUPER privilege.
The directive does not ignore all errors (like fatal errors), only things that are safe to ignore.
CHECKSUM TABLE may give different result as MariaDB doesn't ignore NULLs in the columns as MySQL 5.1 does (Future MySQL versions should calculate checksums the same way as MariaDB). You can get the 'old style' checksum in MariaDB by starting mysqld with the --old option. Note however that that the MyISAM and Aria storage engines in MariaDB are using the new checksum
internally, so if you are using --old, the CHECKSUM command will be slower as it needs to calculate the checksum row by row.
The slow query log has about the query, which may be a problem if you have a script which parses the slow query log.
MariaDB by default takes a bit more memory than MySQL because we have by default enabled the for handling internal temporary tables. If you need MariaDB to take very little
memory (at the expense of performance), you can set the value of aria_pagecache_buffer_size to 1M (the default is 128M).
If you are using ,new features of MariaDB or , you can't move easily back and forth between MySQL and MariaDB anymore.
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