While RedHat and Google have been dumping MySQL for MariaDB, there’s actually a third, much lesser-known option for MySQL-oriented database folks in the RDBMS market: CUBRID.
One of CUBRID’s main goals is also to lure MySQL users away from Oracle by offering many equivalent syntax elements that are available in either the MySQL or Oracle databases. But this gem from the far east, which is backed by the Korean Naver Corp. offers a lot more. It is one of the few Open Source RDBMS that
- is also an ORDBMS (only PostgreSQL can compete with this)
- implements the SQL standard MERGE statement (HSQLDB and Firebird do as well, Derby is currently implementing it)
- implements a wide variety of window functions (only PostgreSQL competes, again)
- implements a wide variety of MySQL’s proprietary SQL extensions
- implements Oracle’s awesome
CONNECT BY
syntax (no other database does that)
Popularity-wise, there’s surely much to catch up with, comparing with MySQL and MariaDB:

But the next time you’re looking at a replacement for MySQL, why not also consider CUBRID?