Changes and Improvements in MariaDB 11.8

MariaDB 11.8 will be a long-term release, and is currently in development.

This list includes all features since the previous long-term release (those introduced in the MariaDB 11.5, MariaDB 11.6 and MariaDB 11.7 rolling releases).

New Features

Vectors

• New function VEC_DISTANCE for calculating either a Euclidean or Cosine distance between two vectors, depending on the underlying index type (MDEV-35450)
• aarch64 SIMD instructions now supported (MDEV-34699)

Optimizer

• Optimizer can now take advantage of queries of the format SUBSTR(col, 1, n) = const_str (MDEV-34911)
• Add basic optimizer support for virtual columns - see Virtual Column Support in the Optimizer (MDEV-35616)
• Index condition pushdown is now supported for partitioned tables (MDEV-12404, MariaDB 11.5)
• ANALYZE for statement should show selectivity of pushed index condition (MDEV-18478, MariaDB 11.5)

Temporary files and tables

• Limit size of created disk temporary files and tables (MDEV-9101, MariaDB 11.5)
• There are two system variables used for controlling this feature (MariaDB 11.5):
  • max_tmp_session_space_usage: Limits the the temporary space allowance per user
  • max_tmp_total_space_usage: Limits the temporary space allowance for all users.

Data Types

• The TIMESTAMP range of values was extended. The maximal allowed value for timestamps was '2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC', and is now '2106-02-07 06:28:15 UTC'. This does not change the storage format, and new tables can be read by old MariaDB servers as long as timestamp values are within the old timestamp range. At the moment this is only supported on 64-bit platforms (MDEV-32188, MariaDB 11.5)

InnoDB

• Fix innodb-adaptive-hash-index scalability with multiple threads (MDEV-35049)

Dumping and Importing

• The mariadb-dump --no-autocommit option is now set by default to allow faster data loading by InnoDB, writing only one undo log for the whole operation (MDEV-32250)
• mariadb-import has a new option, --innodb-optimize-keys to delay creation of secondary indexes until after data load, resulting in faster loads. On by default. (MDEV-34740)
• Parallel dump of multiple databases via mariadb-dump with the --dir option (MDEV-33625, MariaDB 11.5)

GIS

New GIS functions. These functions improve compatibility with MySQL 8.

• ST_Validate (MDEV-34137)
• MBRCoveredBy (MDEV-34138)
• ST_Simplify (MDEV-34141)
• ST_GeoHash (MDEV-34158)
• ST_LatFromGeoHash (MDEV-34159)
• ST_LongFromGeoHash (MDEV-34160)
• ST_PointFromGeoHash (MDEV-34277)
• ST_IsValid (MDEV-34276)
• ST_Collect (MDEV-34278)

Functions

• New FORMAT_BYTES function. Given a byte count, returns a string consisting of a value and the units in a human-readable format (MDEV-31736)

Referential Integrity

• CHECK TABLE ... EXTENDED now also checks for referential integrity (MDEV-34309)

Protocol

• Permit bulk implementation to return ALL individual results (MDEV-30366, MariaDB 11.5)
• Send initial values of system variables in first OK packet (MDEV-31609, MariaDB 11.5)

Observability

• New USERS table in the Information Schema for storing information about users, password expiry, and the limits set by max_password_errors (MDEV-23729, MDEV-32218, MariaDB 11.5)
• Add more columns to Information Schema TABLE_STATISTICS, CLIENT_STATISTICS and USER STATISTICS tables (MDEV-33151, MariaDB 11.5)
• Add QUERIES column to Information Schema INDEX_STATISTICS table (MDEV-33152, MariaDB 11.5)
• Add FLUSH GLOBAL STATUS (MDEV-33145, MariaDB 11.5)
• Provide InnoDB async IO statistics (MDEV-32841, MariaDB 11.5)
• Show variable deprecation for mariadbd --help output (MDEV-28671, MariaDB 11.5)
• Extend Query Response Time plugin to be compatible with Percona server (MDEV-33501, MariaDB 11.5)

Sequences

• Additional features for Sequences (MDEV-28152, MariaDB 11.5)
  • CREATE SEQUENCE ... AS permits creating as any INT type (including BIGINT UNSIGNED), extending the range
  • Information Schema Sequences table
  • Parser accepts larger and smaller values for MINVALUE and MAXVALUE
• ANALYZE TABLE on sequences no longer attempts to collect statistics (MDEV-33938)

Information Schema

• When querying the information Schema, stored functions that have the same name as a native function no longer generate a warning (MDEV-35437)

Other

• REPAIR TABLE ... FORCE (MDEV-33449, MariaDB 11.5)
• Deprecate and ignore the alter_algorithm system variable (MDEV-33655, MariaDB 11.5)
• Change default Unicode collation to uca1400_ai_ci, a modern Unicode collation with proper support for SMP characters (including emoji)(MDEV-25829, MariaDB 11.5)
• Deprecate spider_casual_read (MDEV-31789, MariaDB 11.5)

List of All MariaDB 11.8 Releases