The Ultimate Guide to High Availability with MariaDB
This is a read-only copy of the MariaDB Knowledgebase generated on 2024-11-21. For the latest, interactive version please visit https://mariadb.com/kb/.

Changes & Improvements in MariaDB 5.1

MariaDB 5.1 is no longer maintained. Please use a more recent release.

Download MariaDB 5.1

DateReleaseStatusRelease NotesChangelog
30 Jan 2013MariaDB 5.1.67Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
29 Nov 2012MariaDB 5.1.66Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
6 Apr 2012MariaDB 5.1.62Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
2 Apr 2012MariaDB 5.1.61Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
5 Dec 2011MariaDB 5.1.69Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
1 Mar 2011MariaDB 5.1.55Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
6 Dec 2010MariaDB 5.1.53Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
19 Nov 2010MariaDB 5.1.51Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
9 Sep 2010MariaDB 5.1.50Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
9 Aug 2010MariaDB 5.1.49Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
1 Jun 2010MariaDB 5.1.47Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
10 May 2010MariaDB 5.1.44bStable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
24 Mar 2010MariaDB 5.1.44Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
1 Feb 2010MariaDB 5.1.42Stable (GA)Release NotesChangelog
13 Jan 2010MariaDB 5.1.41Release CandidateRelease NotesChangelog
15 Nov 2009MariaDB 5.1.39BetaRelease NotesChangelog
29 Oct 2009MariaDB 5.1.38BetaRelease NotesChangelog

Contents

  1. New storage engines:
  2. Speed improvements
  3. Extensions & new features
  4. Easier to upgrade
  5. Better Testing
  6. Fewer warnings and bugs
  7. Security Vulnerabilities Fixed in MariaDB 5.1

In short, MariaDB 5.1 is a binary drop in replacement of MySQL 5.1, but with performance like MySQL 5.5 (thanks to XtraDB), fewer bugs, and more features. Thanks to the extended and improved mysql_upgrade program it's also easier to upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to MariaDB 5.1 than to MySQL 5.1.

MariaDB 5.1 is based on MySQL 5.1. We do a merge once a month with MySQL5.1 to ensure all MySQL bug fixes get into MariaDB.

See also:

New storage engines:

  • Aria: A crash-safe storage engine based on MyISAM.
  • XtraDB: Drop-in replacement for InnoDB based on the InnoDB plugin.
  • PBXT: A transactional storage engine with a lot of nice features.
  • FederatedX: Drop-in replacement for Federated.

Speed improvements

  • CHECKSUM TABLE is faster.
  • We have eliminated/improved some not needed character set conversions. Overall speed improvements is 1-5 % (according to sql-bench) but can be higher for big result sets with all characters between 0x00-0x7f.
  • Our use of the Aria storage engine enables faster complex queries (queries which normally use disk-based temporary tables). The Aria storage engine is used for internal temporary tables, which should give you a speedup when doing complex selects. Aria is usually faster for temporary tables when compared to MyISAM because Aria caches row data in memory and normally doesn't have to write the temporary rows to disk.
  • There are some improvements to DBUG code to make its execution faster when debug is compiled in but not used.

Extensions & new features

Easier to upgrade

We have made it easy to upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to MariaDB 5.1

  • InnoDB and Archive tables are now upgraded properly.
  • More options to mysql_upgrade and mysqlcheck to find out what's going on.
  • Cleaned up wrong warnings from mysqlcheck.

(Upgrading from MySQL 5.1 to MariaDB 5.1 is a trivial 1 min exercise as MariaDB is a binary drop in replacement of MySQL. Just remove MySQL and install MariaDB and things will *just work* )

Better Testing

  • More tests in the test suite.
  • All tests runs now clean without having to restart test. (Oracle re-runs tests 3 times and assumes things are ok if one tests works)
  • Test builds with different configure options to get better feature testing.
  • Remove invalid tests. (e.g. Don't test feature "X" if that feature is not in the build you are testing.)

Fewer warnings and bugs

  • A build is not regarded ok if there are any errors or compiler warnings.
  • We have fixed a lot of bugs in the MySQL code which we have found while merging the MySQL code into MariaDB and by running the extended test suite.

Security Vulnerabilities Fixed in MariaDB 5.1

For a complete list of security vulnerabilities (CVEs) fixed across all versions of MariaDB, see the Security Vulnerabilities Fixed in MariaDB page.

The following CVEs are also fixed in MariaDB 5.1 but the fix is not tied to a specific version number:

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