server

Why we included this project

MariaDB is the natural pick when you are running MySQL workloads and want vector search without standing up a second database. It began as a fork of MySQL led by the original MySQL developers, so wire protocol and syntax compatibility carry over and most applications migrate with little rework. Since 11.8 it ships a built-in VECTOR data type with HNSW approximate-nearest-neighbour indexing, which means you can store embeddings in the same relational tables as your operational data and query them with plain SQL. On top of that, pluggable storage engines, Galera synchronous clustering, and columnar analytics let the same server grow from a small app to a large production deployment. Teams that prefer one database for both transactional data and embeddings get that without bolting on an extra integration layer.