Can I use an alternative database to MySQL?

If you're setting up a self-hosted MIDAS room booking system, you may be wondering whether you're locked into using MySQL - or whether there are viable alternatives. The short answer is yes: MIDAS officially supports more than one database engine, giving you flexibility depending on your hosting environment and preferences.

What Database Does MIDAS Use?

MIDAS communicates with its database using SQL (Structured Query Language), a widely-used method for storing and retrieving structured data. Several SQL-based database engines exist, including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and SQLite - each with their own implementation of SQL.

Historically, MIDAS was built around MySQL, the world's most widely deployed open-source relational database, used by organisations ranging from small businesses to high-profile platforms such as YouTube, PayPal, and eBay. MySQL's near-universal availability across web hosting providers made it the natural default choice for self-hosted deployments. A community edition of MySQL may also be freely downloaded and installed on your own server.

MariaDB: The Supported MySQL Alternative for MIDAS

MariaDB is a free, open-source database engine developed as a community-driven fork of MySQL, and its developers describe it as a "drop-in replacement for MySQL". This means it is designed to be functionally compatible with MySQL while offering its own performance improvements and features.

MIDAS has been fully tested with MariaDB and officially supports it as an alternative to MySQL. In fact, since 2021, all MIDAS cloud-hosted customers run on MariaDB rather than MySQL - a strong signal of its stability and reliability in production environments.

For self-hosted MIDAS installations, you can therefore choose either MySQL or MariaDB as your database engine with full confidence that both are supported.

Which Should You Choose: MySQL or MariaDB?

For most self-hosted MIDAS users, the choice between MySQL and MariaDB comes down to what your hosting provider already supports. Key considerations:

• Hosting provider support: Many modern web hosts and control panels (such as cPanel) now offer MariaDB by default, sometimes in place of MySQL entirely. Check what's available on your server.
• Performance: MariaDB generally offers performance improvements over equivalent MySQL versions, particularly for read-heavy workloads.
• Licensing: Both are free and open-source, though MariaDB is fully community-governed, whereas MySQL is owned by Oracle.
• Compatibility: If you're migrating an existing installation, both engines use the same connection settings and SQL syntax, making switching straightforward.

Either database engine will work reliably with MIDAS, and the setup process is nearly identical for both.