MariaDB Enterprise Spring 2016 adds greater availability and protection against attacks

MariaDB Corporation has unveiled the latest release of the firm's enterprise-grade database management system based on a community-developed fork of the MySQL code.

The update adds capabilities to defend against application- and network-level attacks, and provides higher availability for mission-critical applications.

MariaDB Enterprise Spring 2016 will be available in the coming weeks, and is a commercially supported version of the MariaDB 10.1 open source project, itself a fork developed from MySQL.

The latest release is based on the MariaDB Server 10.1.12 code and focuses on adding capabilities that protect data against attack and provide greater availability and performance for mission-critical applications, according to MariaDB.

Higher availability comes partly through integration of the Galera multi-master cluster technology, which provides synchronous replication and an active-active multi-master topology for database server nodes.

Customers with mission-critical applications will also benefit from more than a dozen transaction processing performance improvements, according to MariaDB. These include InnoDB storage engine optimisation, memory optimisation to boost query response, and several enhancements drawn from the WebScaleSQL open source project.

On the security side, the latest release adds protection against SQL injection and denial-of-service attacks. It also provides transparent encryption of data at rest in the database and in transit to and from applications, MariaDB said. This is backed by the ability to store encryption keys in a number of key-management platforms.

The company has also introduced the MariaDB Security Audit service to help customers identify and address any security weaknesses in a database deployment. The service will also assist customers in taking full advantage of MariaDB's security capabilities, the firm said.

The move comes in the same week that Microsoft announced the development of a version of the SQL Server database platform that will run on Linux. MariaDB is already cross-platform, running on Windows and Linux, so Microsoft is potentially invading its patch.

However, Nishant Vyas, MariaDB's head of product and strategy, claimed that the company is unconcerned about the move.

"We welcome Microsoft's decision to introduce SQL on Linux. If Microsoft follows through on its plans to introduce SQL on Linux in mid-2017, that would add to the range of database software choices on one of the world's most popular technology platforms, and choice is a benefit for end users," he said.

The open source community is a key driver behind many of the most advanced technologies in use today, and Microsoft "will have to learn how it operates or risk falling behind", he said.

Customers signing up for subscription-based support from MariaDB get the database along with data connectors for enterprise applications, the MaxScale data proxy tool, database management plug-ins and 24x7 support.

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