You make a small change to your table, adding a single row, and it affects data lake performance because, due to the way they work, a new file has to be written that contains one row, and then a bunch of metadata has to be written. This is very inefficient, because formats like Parquet really don't want to store a single row, they want to store a million rows.
For a long time I wanted to document something I have done many times in production systems but never explained clearly: using Django ORM as a standalone module to connect to an existing database. In my work I have often dealt with legacy systems where the only reliable source of truth was the database itself. In those situations, Django ORM became my Swiss army knife.
There is a growing emphasis on database compliance today due to the stricter enforcement of compliance rules and regulations to safeguard user privacy. For example, GDPR fines can reach £17.5 million or 4% of annual global turnover (the higher of the two applies). Besides the direct monetary implications, companies also need to prioritize compliance to protect their brand reputation and achieve growth.
Oracle firmly believes that MySQL's enduring strength arises from this vibrant global community. We are excited to work with the MySQL Community on the strategy we announced in Belgium, January 29, 2026, including adding more features and functionality, accelerating innovation directly in the MySQL core.
A new open-source project, VillageSQL, has been introduced as a tracking fork of MySQL aimed at expanding extensibility and addressing feature gaps increasingly relevant to AI and agent-based workloads. Announced by founder Dominic Preuss, VillageSQL Server for MySQL is positioned as a drop-in replacement that maintains compatibility with upstream MySQL while adding a structured extension framework. The alpha release is now available for experimentation.
Ever since version 10.3, MariaDB has been steadily adding Oracle compatibility features, making it easier to port Oracle to MariaDB as-is. Oracle compatibility is opt-in. All you need to do is issue the command SET SQL_MODE='ORACLE' to activate it for a given set of SQL statements. Existing MariaDB behaviors will also be preserved wherever possible.
But it still contains useful things and can be upgraded to from MySQL 8.4 LTS; the MySQL Configurator automatically does the upgrade without user intervention during MSI installations on Windows. The major changes include: A new Vector datatype is supported in CREATE and ALTER statements. JavaScript Stored Programs, which support JavaScript-based stored programs and functions, has come to MySQL Enterprise Edition. JavaScript Stored Programs can call SQL, and SQL can call them.
Google has overhauled Firestore Enterprise edition's query engine, adding Pipeline operations that let developers chain together multiple query stages for complex aggregations, array operations, and regex matching. The update removes Firestore's longstanding query limitations and makes indexes optional, putting the database on par with other major NoSQL platforms. Pipeline operations work through sequential stages that transform data inside the database.
Developers have spent the past decade trying to forget databases exist. Not literally, of course. We still store petabytes. But for the average developer, the database became an implementation detail; an essential but staid utility layer we worked hard not to think about. We abstracted it behind object-relational mappers (ORM). We wrapped it in APIs. We stuffed semi-structured objects into columns and told ourselves it was flexible.
