Key Differences & All You Need To Know

November 23, 2022
Cloudways Managed Cloud Hosting Platform
Hosting, WordPress
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In modern-day website development, a database plays an essential role in managing and storing data. Today, we have the freedom to choose from several databases to deal with dynamic data and opt for the one that suits our requirements. It is important to not just understand the databases but also to learn the key differences between them.

This article highlights the significant differences and similarities between MySQL and MariaDB. We’ll look into primary features, performance, and security and list all features that must be considered before choosing the right database for your requirements.

What is Maria DB?

MariaDB is an open-source fork of MySQL created in 2009. MariaDB is a backward-compatible improved version of MySQL. It comes with various inbuilt capable features and many security and execution improvements missing in MySQL. MariaDB supports the same features that MySQL does but offers additional ones too.

Replacing MySQL, MariaDB has become a seamless process for most applications and CMS, especially WordPress. The existing software, from popular CMS tools to apps like phpMyAdmin, works out of the box, and actual data can be exported/imported without any changes.

What is MySQL?

MySQL is a relational database (RDBMS) that first came out in 1995. At that time, Microsoft and Oracle’s proprietary solutions dominated the market.

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system with its roots in SQL or Structured Query Language MySQL stands among the most used databases worldwide, but it is by no means the only one. Developed in C/C++, MySQL is free and open-source and has made significant headway.

However, during Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, some of the senior engineers working on developing MySQL felt that there was a conflict of interest between MySQL and Oracle’s commercial database – Oracle Database Server.