Unless you have a single server running on-prem with quick physical access to it and no need for high availability and scalability, managing databases is not that easy. System updates, security configurations and patches, provisioning, monitoring, networking, replication, scalability, backup management, and cost control, among others, are aspects that you have to keep in mind when deploying databases. Software developers want a database that’s boring, but at the same time exciting because it just works. This is exactly what SkySQL offers.

What is SkySQL?

SkySQL is a second-generation cloud database service for deploying:

• A single instance of MariaDB Enterprise Server
• A cluster of MariaDB Enterprise Server with one primary and multiple replicas for read-scalability
• A MariaDB ColumnStore cluster for analytics
• A MariaDB Xpand cluster for read and write-scalability
• A serverless Apache Spark engine with a notebook for AI/ML analytics

On:

• Amazon Web Services
• Google Cloud Platform
• Others (like Azure) are coming soon

Integrating with:

• Qlik - Extend SkySQL into live streams to enable modern analytics and microservices
• Striim - Build real-time data pipelines with SkySQL
• MindsDB - Rapid Generative AI Development and Deployment using SQL

And with features such as:

• Remote observability of MariaDB databases deployed outside SkySQL (including on-prem)
• Cloud backup management of MariaDB database deployed anywhere
• SQL query editor for running SQL statements and visualizing tabular data
• Automatic scaling on workload changes (up/down and in/out)
• Geospatial data service to create web services from aerial imagery, elevation, or other geospatial data
• Developer Notebook: Explore data on any SkySQL service, no ETL code required
• Query Federation: Join across SkySQL services and any Spark Datasource

In summary, you can handle any kind of data workload with the database services available in SkySQL. Connecting to a database deployed using SkySQL is the same as connecting to a secured MariaDB database server running on-prem or in any cloud—use the MariaDB Connector for your programming language and you are good to go.

Connecting to SkySQL services

You can learn more about SkySQL by watching the recording of the webinar “Developing Unstoppable Applications with the SkySQL Cloud Database Service” in which I explain what a second-generation database service is, why you need it, how to use the SkySQL portal, and how to connect to SkySQL services.

There are also a series of YouTube videos on:

• Get started with SkySQL and create your first database in the cloud for free
• Connect to SkySQL services from tools like DBeaver and IDEs
• Connect to SkySQL services from Java
• Connect to SkySQL services from JavaScript/Node.js
• Connect to SkySQL services from Python

If you prefer source code, there’s a GitHub repository with examples in Java, JavaScript.js, and Python that show how to connect to SkySQL services using the MariaDB Connectors without using persistence frameworks. If you want to use persistence frameworks, you can use the same connection parameter values shown in these examples.

Trying SkySQL for free

You can create a database in the cloud in seconds for free using SkySQL. You don’t need a credit card. Sign up at https://skysql.mariadb.com using your Google, GitHub, LinkedIn, or email accounts and create a new service. Then explore your new service using the provided trial credit in your SkySQL account.