MySQL vs. MariaDB: Reality Check
who says MariaDB doesn&#x27;t work with ProxySQL?<p>Also, this statement is total BS:<p>&quot;The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, but the risk of moving out of MariaDB Server to MySQL is very prevalent.&quot;<p>Here is the correct statement:<p>&quot;The risk of moving to MariaDB Server if you aren’t using newer MySQL features may be minimal, and the risk of moving to MySQL server if you aren&#x27;t using newer MariaDB features is also minimal.&quot;<p>I switch between multiple versions of MySQL and MariaDB all day long.   If you aren&#x27;t using specific things like MySQL&#x27;s JSON type or NDB storage engine or expecting CHECK constraints to enforce on MySQL (oddly omitted from this feature comparison!), there is nothing different at all from a developer point of view, beyond the default values of flags which honestly change more between MySQL releases than anything else.<p>As the maintainer of SQLAlchemy I think MySQL more often makes backwards-incompatible changes more often than MariaDB, such as just from 5.7.19 to 5.7.20 they decided to change the name of &quot;@tx_isolation&quot; to &quot;@transaction_isolation&quot; (and no, &quot;@transaction_isolation&quot; is not in 5.7.19, they just changed the name on a point release) and start emitting a prominent, scary warning when you use @tx_isolation that is breaking people&#x27;s CI builds - on a <i>point release</i>.<p>The reason a vendor like Percona or a linux distro chooses to favor MySQL or MariaDB is mostly about that vendor&#x27;s relationship with Oracle (or lack thereof) more than anything else.   I&#x27;m stuck using both all the time but the MariaDB community certainly feels more accessible than trying to get through to people working at Oracle.