MariaDB Cheat Sheet

MariaDB SQL basics, storage engines, and the key differences from MySQL, including Aria, Galera clustering, and native features.

2 PagesIntermediateMar 8, 2026

Connecting & Basics

CLI connection and schema browsing.

sql

mariadb -u root -pSHOW DATABASES;USE mydb;SHOW TABLES;DESCRIBE users;

SQL Essentials

Core DDL and DML statements.

sql

CREATE TABLE users (  id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,  email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL UNIQUE,  created_at DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) ENGINE=InnoDB;INSERT INTO users (email) VALUES ('a@b.com');SELECT * FROM users WHERE email LIKE '%example%';REPLACE INTO users (id, email) VALUES (1, 'x@y.com');

Engines & Indexing

Aria tables and index basics.

sql

-- Aria: MariaDB's crash-safe MyISAM replacementCREATE TABLE logs (id INT PRIMARY KEY, msg TEXT) ENGINE=Aria;CREATE INDEX idx_email ON users(email);EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM users WHERE email = 'a@b.com';

MariaDB vs MySQL

Notable divergences worth knowing.

Aria- MariaDB's default engine for internal/temp tables; crash-safe unlike MyISAM
Sequence engine- generates number sequences, e.g. SELECT * FROM seq_1_to_10
JSON type- stored as LONGTEXT with a CHECK constraint, not a native binary type
Galera Cluster- synchronous multi-master replication built into MariaDB
System-versioned tables- WITH SYSTEM VERSIONING adds built-in temporal history
Window functions- supported since MariaDB 10.2 with standard ANSI syntax

Pro Tip

MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL at the wire-protocol level, but don't assume full feature parity — its JSON type is really a TEXT alias with a validation constraint, not MySQL's native binary JSON type.

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