xtradb vs innodb
I was asked to check Mariadb as Centos does not provider MySQL 5.5 for the moment. I have read that xtradb servers as a drop in for innodb.
What are the advantages of using one or the other because if they were equal, they would not have been called the same name?
Do you think that I should switch to Mariadb? What kind of problems I might face in the future because of updates if any.
I know that the founder of MySQL is behind Mariadb, and Oracle is managing MySQL now. It seems a bit tricky as a tricky decision.
Thank you in advance for your opinion,
Update, I asked the question here, because google did not display any recent updates. Only some old comparisons published prior to 2012
Answer
XtraDB is InnoDB with several patches added. The patches themselves stem from Google, Facebook and others. XtraDB is maintained by Percona and the heart of Percona Server.
You may think of Percona as a distributor who collects, coordinates and maintains patches and distributes an enhanced version of the MySQL server.
A feature comparison between stock MySQL and Percona Server can be seen here:
http://www.percona.com/software/percona-server/feature-comparison
The XtraDB engine is also shipped as default InnoDB implementation in MariaDB. MariaDB includes also stock InnoDB as pluggable storage engine, so you can chose.
Benchmarks show that XtraDB scales better on massively parallel architectures and especially XtraDB is much better suited for write-heavy workload. The InnoDB engine in MySQL 5.6 will incorporate many of the features and advantages that have so far been available in XtraDB only.