Plone and MariaDB

So as well as MySQL, Zope/Plone lets you integrate and manage data in MariaDB in many different ways.

Prerequisite

MySQL python module (MySQLdb) is a Python database API for MySQL (and also MariaDB). It is needed in first place when you want to make Zope/Plone to work with MariaDB.

In order to make MySQL-python works smoothly with MariaDB, you have to make sure the socket file of MariaDB locates in the same path as MySQL i.e. you should set socket option in my.cnf configuration file to:

[mysqld]
socket        = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Using ZMySQLDA and Z SQL method

The ZMySQLDA is used to connect Zope to the actual MariaDB/MySQL database. If you have installed the ZMySQLDA package successfully, you will see “Z MYSQL Database Connection” in the drop down menu located at the top right corner of the ZMI. You can easily create a connection to your MariaDB by add a new Z MySQL Database Connection object and configure it.

After created a connection, you can perform many actions such as select, insert, delete etc. to your MariaDB database using Z SQL Method objects.

Z SQL Method and Z MySQL Database Connection objects could be used in many Zope/Plone components e.g. ZPT, Python Script, Archetypes and PloneFormGen.

Using SQLAlchemy

SQLAlchemy is a comprehensive set of tools for working with databases and Python. With SQLAlchemy, you have the power to control almost everything in your MariaDB bases on the Object Relational Mapper.

In Zope/Plone, you should use one of the helper additional packages bellow when working with SQLAlchemy that support Zope transaction integration:

• zope.sqlalchemy
• z3c.sqlalchemy
• collective.lead

Remember to keep mysql as the driver name in your DSN, do not change it to mariadb. The DSN should be something like 'mysql://user:password@host/dbname'.

Using RelStorage

RelStorage is a storage implementation for ZODB that stores pickles in a relational database.  RelStorage enables you to replace the built-in FileStorage of ZODB with a RDBMS e.g. MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and MariaDB.

RelStorage requires InnoDB to be enabled when working with MariaDB. MariaDB from 5.1 included two plugins InnoDB and XtraDB by default. You only need to check whether one of these plugins be installed (XtraDB also supports InnoDB storage engine). If not, you should install it by using the INSTALL PLUGIN command e.g.

INSTALL PLUGIN innodb SONAME 'ha_innodb_plugin.so';

References

MariaDB versus MySQL
http://kb.askmonty.org/v/mariadb-versus-mysql-compatibility

MySQL Python
http://mysql-python.sourceforge.net/

Plone and MySQL
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/plone-and-mysql

ZMySQLDA
http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/Products/ZMySQLDA

ZSQL Methods User Guide:
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Guides/ZSQL/2.1.1%20pdf/ZSQL.pdf

zope.sqlalchemy
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zope.sqlalchemy

z3c.sqlalchemy
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/z3c.sqlalchemy

collective.lead
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/collective.lead/

RelStorage
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/RelStorage