We recently asked the community:
“Which MySQL-compatibility feature would you most like to see in the next MariaDB release?”
A big thank you to everyone who voted. We received 506 votes, and the results give us a helpful snapshot of which compatibility gaps feel most important to users right now.
Poll results
A two-feature race
The first thing that jumps out is how close the top two were.
MEMBER OF json operator (MDEV-38591) came in first with 145 votes, but bitwise operators for binary and bit types (MDEV-10526) were right behind it with 138 votes. That is only a 7-vote difference.
So while there is technically a winner, the bigger story is that the community sent a strong signal about two features, not just one.
Together, those two options accounted for 56% of all votes, indicating that these are the compatibility gaps people feel most strongly about today.
JSON clearly matters
One of the clearest themes in the results is continued interest in JSON compatibility.
If we combine the two JSON-related options:
- MEMBER OF json operator — 145 votes
- column->path and column->>path JSON operators (MDEV-13594) — 54 votes
That gives us 199 votes, or about 39% of the total.
That is a significant share, suggesting that JSON support remains an important part of the compatibility conversation for many users.
It is also interesting that MEMBER OF attracted much more support than the JSON path operators. That may mean users are especially focused on the JSON features that show up directly in application logic and day-to-day query patterns.
Bitwise support was almost tied for first
The results of bitwise operators for binary and bit types are worth calling out on their own.
This is the kind of feature that might not sound flashy at first, but the voting suggests it matters a lot in practice. Finishing just behind the top result tells us that many users care deeply about compatibility in areas that are more foundational and less visible than headline features.
That is a useful reminder: sometimes the biggest pain points are not the most glamorous ones. They are the missing pieces that make migrations harder, require query rewrites, or create small but persistent incompatibilities in existing applications.
A very tight middle group
The next three options were packed closely together:
- ngram support (MDEV-10267) — 61 votes
- ANY_VALUE function (MDEV-10426) — 59 votes
- column->path and column->>path JSON operators — 54 votes
There is no huge gap here. These look like features with solid support, even if they were not in the top tier.
That tells us the interest is not limited to just one or two issues. There is also a broader set of compatibility improvements that users would clearly welcome.
A few quick takeaways from that middle group:
- ngram support seems to have a meaningful audience, likely especially for search-related use cases.
- ANY_VALUE looks like one of those practical compatibility features that help reduce friction, even if it is not the sort of thing people usually talk about in big-picture terms.
- JSON path operators still received a healthy number of votes, which reinforces the broader theme around JSON
One feature was clearly lower priority
At the bottom of the list:
- UUID_TO_BIN, BIN_TO_UUID and IS_UUID functions (MDEV-15854) — 17 votes (3%)
That result does not mean these functions lack value. But relative to the rest of the poll, they appear to be a lower-priority ask for the broader community right now.
At first, I was surprised by the result of this feature, as it is a strong recommendation when using UUIDs in MySQL: store them as BINARY(16) and swap the timestamp value to force incremental inserts in InnoDB when using UUIDs as the primary key.
But MariaDB already provides a real UUID datatype that stores them correctly, and that could explain the lack of interest in this feature.
What we take from this
A few things stand out from the results.
First, the community seems to care most about compatibility features that make a real difference in everyday use, whether that is through better JSON support or smoother handling of lower-level data operations.
Second, JSON remains a major theme. That came through very clearly in the voting.
And third, there is a good reminder here that compatibility is not just about a single feature type. Some users are looking for modern JSON-related operators, while others are focused on long-standing SQL and data-handling behavior that affects application portability just as much.
These results help us to strategically discuss the roadmap and prioritize the related MDEV (MariaDB Jira issue ID) correctly.
Those new compatibility features will most likely be part of the next MariaDB 13.3 LTS release. Some are also part of the GSoC.
Thank you for voting
Thanks again to everyone who took part in the poll.
Community feedback like this is valuable because it helps highlight which compatibility gaps are most visible — and most frustrating — in real-world use. Even a simple poll can tell us a lot about where people are running into friction and what they would most like to see improved next.
Keep telling us more by participating in the next poll: “Where do you run MariaDB most in production?”