MariaDB Aria

Hey CaveatLector,

I think it should work, but I never actually tested it.
Can you test it for me (on a DEV or test database)?

Please let me know if it works.

Thanks!
Rolf

Yes, I will test and report back.

I used v3.4.6 to try to optimize a 49MB MariaDB Aria WordPress database (the website has 2995 total pages & posts). Revisions, trashed items, and expired transients were deleted, but the database tables were not optimized. However, it appears that no damage was done. Except for the deleted items, everything else seems to be exactly as it was before.

I ran that trial with WordPress 4.2.3 using:
Server version: 10.0.20-MariaDB-1
version_compile_machine: x86_64
version_compile_os: debian-linux-gnu
version_malloc_library: bundled jemalloc

I just learned there is an aria_chk utility that can be used to check, repair, optimize, sort and get information about Aria tables. However, you will see this note on the page I just linked to:

“Note: aria_chk should not be used when MariaDB is running. MariaDB assumes that no one is changing the tables it’s using!”

So, even if there was a way to run it, it obviously shouldn’t be run from a WordPress plugin.

I only recently started using Aria and apparently had something configured wrong. I made some configuration changes today, repeated the trial described above, and v3.4.6 optimized the same database tables without any problem. I am not sure which change made the difference, but it now appears that your optimization code works fine with Aria.

Hey CaveatLector,

Many thanks for checking!

It’s useful information for me (and other users of the plugin)

Thanks!
Rolf

In offline clone testing following my last post I successfully optimized a dozen WordPress Aria databases ranging from small to more than 100MB. Several have custom post types and the sites use a wide variety of WordPress plugins, both public and privately written. No problems were found with any of that, which gave me enough confidence to optimize production sites.

Of course, there has been lots of movement from MySQL to MariaDB due to concerns about MySQL’s future with the closed nature of current development. I moved all my servers to MariaDB 18-months ago and have been very pleased, but until now I have used only the MyISAM and XtraDB storage engines. The Aria storage engine has important advantages compared to MyISAM that are especially important to anyone depending on a website for financial income, such as being crash-proof and allowing automatic total restoration or replication from a server log file, so it is sure to become increasingly popular with business users.

Hey CaveatLector,

At our University we also use MariaDB for our (huge) corporate websites (with TYPO3).

For my private clients (through my own company) I still use MySQL / WordPress.
So far it works fine for relatively small sites.

ciao,
Rolf