MariaDB vs Visual Studio

Yes. MariaDB Server is licensed under GPLv2 and guaranteed to remain perpetually free and open source, independent of any commercial entities.

Standard subscriptions include access to more benefits, such as Azure dev/test pricing, monthly Azure individual credit, software and download access, services, training, and support. Monthly subscriptions offer flexibility but fewer benefits.

Yes. MariaDB was designed as a drop-in replacement for MySQL. Every application, driver, and configuration that worked with MySQL works with MariaDB without code changes.

There aren't any discounts available to start-ups, however an unlimited number of users within an organization can use Visual Studio Community for specific scenarios like open source work.

MariaDB supports multiple storage engines including InnoDB (transactional, default), Aria (crash-safe, good for read-heavy workloads), and MyISAM. The Aria engine is faster than InnoDB for certain read-heavy queries and full table scans.

In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use it. Enterprise organizations (greater than 250 PCs or greater than $1M annual revenue) cannot use it beyond academic/open-source scenarios.

MariaDB Community Server is completely free to download and use. MariaDB offers paid enterprise support and managed cloud services for organizations needing professional support.

Enterprise standard renews at $214.09/month (after initial $499.92); Professional at $66.59/month (after $99.99).

MariaDB stores JSON using text fields (the JSON type is an alias for LONGTEXT), not as a native binary type like MySQL does. JSON support exists but is less sophisticated than MySQL's JSON functions and syntax.

MariaDB supports both scaling up (more cores, memory, storage) and scaling out (read replication, Galera Cluster with multi-node replication). However, Galera Cluster performance cannot exceed the slowest node in the cluster.