MariaDB Xpand 6 GA
March 14, 2022
MariaDB
releasedf Xpand 6 with significant new
features, all in the pursuit of maximizing
performance. With fast operational
analytics, Xpand now has the smarts to
eliminate the need and inconsistencies of
loading data to operational data warehouses.
Faster parallel data replication across
global regions is putting global deployments
in everyone’s reach.
As businesses around the world face
unpredictable demand and change, they need a
database that handles surprise increases in
transactions and more diverse workloads
while maintaining strict data consistency
and availability. MariaDB Xpand is a fully
distributed SQL database with a shared
nothing architecture. Unlike AWS Aurora’s
storage replication or Postgres’ read
replication, Xpand is a true multi-writer,
any node can be written to and adds scale
for reads and writes.
Columnar Perspective
Columnar data models are popular for ad hoc
analytics and perform well on large amounts
of data. Xpand is the first modern
distributed SQL database supporting this
powerful feature for online-transaction
processing. Xpand uses columnar indexes for
real-time operational analytics directly on
transactional data, without losing
consistency or missing the latest
transactions.
The new columnar feature enables companies
to run ad hoc queries in Xpand with speeds
up to 50x faster. Best performance is
guaranteed as the fully cost based optimizer
will determine the faster path, columnar or
not. Applications immediately benefit from
the new feature without any changes after
columnar indexes have been activated.
Developers can leverage this new feature to
provide smarter applications, better user
experiences and personal analytics giving
their application users the latest status
and insights on all data changes that may
impact them.
Parallel Replication
With
parallel replication, Xpand implements the
equivalent of a multi-lane highway for
asynchronous replication of data across
geo-locations. The data replication is done
independently by each node in the cluster,
which increases throughput at lower latency.
Xpand provides transactional consistency by
maintaining the order of transaction during
replication. Powered by Xpand 6, customers
can deploy their global applications across
regions and cloud vendors to survive any
hyperscaler outages.
“With these key new features in Xpand,
developers get to broaden their use of
analytics in applications without having to
worry about performance, at the same time
supporting the capability is literally
effortless for the database administrators,”
said Robbie Mihalyi, senior vice president
of engineering at MariaDB Corporation. “The
parallel replication capabilities have been
shaped by our customers and their business
needs, giving them maximum data transfer
speeds at minimal latency and control over
their data flows.”
