MariaDB Community Server 11.4 LTS: What This Means For Customers

Posted on April 2, 2024 by
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MariaDB Community Server 11.4 will be a long-term maintenance (LTS) release. Version 11.4 is currently in RC and will be the first release of the 11.x series to be LTS. This means that we will provide five years of bug fixes for this release once it’s GA.

As the main maintainer and feature developer of MariaDB Community Server, we are thrilled to collaborate with the MariaDB Foundation to be able to offer this to community users. We encourage you to start trying MariaDB Community Server 11.4 today!

MariaDB Enterprise Server: What To Expect

We previously communicated that the next major MariaDB Enterprise Server release will happen in 2024. One of the key benefits of MariaDB Enterprise Server is quality and stability There are many ways we achieve this, from more rigorous performance testing, to enhanced quality assurance (QA) and also real-world testing. We know more users will choose to deploy an LTS version. By designating version 11.4 as LTS, we’re ensuring that it undergoes more diverse testing scenarios. This not only enhances the quality of its features but also lays a solid foundation for the upcoming Enterprise Server release.”

As mentioned, we are putting additional resources into performance testing across the board and ensuring that the performance of the new release series exceeds the performance of prior versions. The new QA and performance regression effort for Enterprise Server is in line with our continued focus on quality and stability of our enterprise products.

Finally, there are many new features in the 11.x release series and in version 11.4 in particular that will be made available via the next Enterprise Server version. While we’ve been able to backport some new features to older Enterprise Server version (such as the recent JSON function enhancements), there are many other new features that we are preparing for the next Enterprise Server release, including:

  • Online Schema Change and Optimistic ALTER TABLE for replication: We developed these features together with some of our key customers as the previous disruptiveness of ALTER TABLE operations can have negative impact on busy environments, especially in replication topologies.
  • Furthering JSON functions in MariaDB: We first added JSON functions to MariaDB Server in version 10.2, with new functions being added in an iterative way with each release. For this latest release, we added the following new functions in our tech preview versions so far: JSON_SCHEMA_VALID, JSON_OVERLAPS, JSON_EQUALS() and JSON_NORMALIZE(), JSON_KEY_VALUE, JSON_ARRAY_INTERSECT, JSON_OBJECT_TO_ARRAY, JSON_OBJECT_FILTER_KEYS.
  • Improved InnoDB Tablespace management: Managing InnoDB tablespace is typically not easy to do. However, in collaboration with customers, we made some significant improvements such as automatic reclaim of space and simplified tablespace import.
  • Enhanced Privilege System: In version 10.5, we introduced new fine grained privileges to replace the SUPER privilege that had access rights that were too broad. In the latest release of Enterprise Server, we are finishing the process and SUPER is no longer an alias for the fine grained privileges but instead they must be explicitly granted. This improves the overall security of the server by only granting the privileges needed for administrative tasks.
  • New Optimizer: The optimizer is vastly improved by going from a mostly rule based optimizer to a truly cost-based optimizer. Huge effort went into improving the calculations of the optimizer costs, taking into account state of the art SSD disks, different characteristics of storage engines, etc. These changes greatly improve the performance out-of-the-box for many queries.
  • Enhanced SSL (TLS) security: The client can verify the server self-signed certificate without any configuration whatsoever. The server completely automatically generates the SSL certificate and the client automatically verifies it as needed. This simplification allows the server to now require SSL encrypted connections by default and to refuse unencrypted connections. For more details and limitations please read the blog post Mission Impossible: Zero-Configuration SSL. Additionally, users can verify SSL certificates using their fingerprints.

We’ve shared before that the upcoming Enterprise Server release will be supported for 8 years starting from its General Availability (GA) date. This long-term maintenance ensures you won’t need to upgrade frequently. We’re also introducing a beta program that allows customers to try out the new Enterprise Server release before its official GA date. If you’re interested in joining the beta program, please contact your MariaDB representative.