MariaDB Puts $25K on the Table in Distributed SQL Throwdown Posted on : May 12 - 2022

MariaDB Corporation today announced a database challenge to any company evaluating distributed SQL offerings. Compare Xpand, MariaDB’s distributed SQL database, in a proof of concept with another distributed SQL solution. If Xpand does not demonstrate better throughput and lower latency, MariaDB will donate $25K to either a nonprofit or to offset the infrastructure costs associated with running the test. The challenge applies to either Xpand deployed on a customer’s hardware or cloud infrastructure, or Xpand deployed in the cloud on MariaDB SkySQL.

“We’re confident that MariaDB Xpand outperforms the early-stage distributed SQL offerings like CockroachDB and we’re ready to put it to the test,” said Robbie Mihalyi, senior vice president of engineering, MariaDB Corporation. “Recent Sysbench results against CockroachDB showed that Xpand reached 8x, and up to 10x, better throughput with lower latency, and with better price/performance. Whether in a private data center or in a public cloud, we believe Xpand is the leading distributed SQL solution on the market and we’re willing to put money on it.”

Distributed SQL is a new category of databases that address extreme scalability. For years, digital businesses have faced unprecedented scalability challenges and traditional relational databases have historically struggled to keep up. In the past, scalability with relational databases was only achieved with complex, expensive and incomplete workarounds, such as sharding or expensive hardware. Non-relational approaches traded scalability for strong data consistency. Distributed SQL databases bring all the characteristics businesses expect from a relational database, such as data integrity and high availability, while also enabling massive scalability. View More