Advantages of MariaDB compared to MySQL

1. MariaDB supports significantly more engines (SphinxSE, Aria, FederatedX, TokuDB, Spider, ScaleDB and etc.) compared to MySQL, much more than the common InnoDB to xtraDB, which is almost equivalent to InnoDB, but more powerful.
2. MariaDB is developing more continuously compared to MySQL. Part of this is due to it being open source. Updates are transmitted to end users much faster than MySQL, new features are worked through,faster and features like bug tracker can be viewed in detail more easily.
3. MariaDB also offers a cluster database for commercial use, which also enables multi-master replication. Anyone can use it freely and reliance on a MySQL Enterprise system is not required.
4. MariaDB has been optimized for performance and is much more powerful than MySQL for large amounts of data sets. Elegant migration from other database systems to MariaDB is yet another benefit.

Disadvantages of MariaDB to MySQL

Now the question arises as to whether a change to MariaDB from MySQL. This can be a problem for some and the question is what risks or learning curves would developers and web hosters have to accept?
MariaDB promises on the website that migration from MySQL to MariaDB is simple. A migration should be fast and “problem-free” and thus it should be only a minor task.
1. A subsequent migration of MariaDB back to MySQL has not been possible since release 5.5.36. Since the new release is based on the existing version 10.
2. For a new release, the appropriate libraries (for Debian) will not be deployed in time, which will result in a required upgrade to a newer version due to dependencies.
3. There is a cluster version of MariaDB, even as a free multi-master replication, but even with the use of 3 nodes, it leads regularly to a split brain, whereby the DBMS’s still (one could mean my fault) , But SQL errors occur more often, eg, that SELECT is unknown. Likewise, the configuration of such clusters is associated with many problems that may occur during the configuration. A large selection of troubleshooting items are not available. The documentation in this regard is quite meager, and one is left to troubleshoot based on experience, guess work, or presumptive logical deduction.