I'm not sure if I would agree with this idea. At least at this moment, I feel it's a bit "radical".
Some users may not like MySQL, but it may be the only option for them in their organizations. This may be due to DBA team skills (like other folks already mentioned), AND another potential reason is the Compliance policies in some organizations/companies: Some companies don't allow developers to choose DB. Instead, the architect + compliance teams choose one DB solution, invest in it. Then it becomes the universal single option for the whole org. Many orgs are choosing MySQL or MariaDB. Not all our users have the privileges to use Airflow-As-A-Service products (they may not have approval yet to use cloud in their ogs), and sometimes people are not even allowed to use Docker to run workloads due to compliance policies (it may sound weird but this does happen). Hence I would encourage more thorough thinking & discussion on this topic. Regards, XD On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 11:17 AM Jarek Potiuk <ja...@potiuk.com> wrote: > Hey everyone, > > Some of us had a discussion about MariaDB support here > https://github.com/apache/airflow/pull/18506 and as a result I think > this might be a good time to talk about the Elephant in the room we > have. > > I would like to know what others think about the potential of REMOVING > MySQL support in future Airflow versions ? > > I believe for quite some time MySQL is the "Elephant in the room" for > us, and it's one of the things that already slows us down when we add > new features and when at some point we start thinking about Airflow 3, > maybe, just maybe we could think about removing support for it. > > Why thinking about removing MySQL? > > Quoting the quote of Kaxil from our discussion " "Do less but do them > well". We are relying more and more on more sophisticated features and > queries of the underlying DB and this has already hit - especially the > people who developed new features but also those who helped others > with issues. > > There are multiple problems with MySQL: deadlocks, encoding problems, > support for different query constructs we have and they keep on > reappearing. I personally developed quite negative feelings for MySQL > while working on Airflow. > > Some more context: > > * All the Airflow-As-A-Service providers are using Postgres now as of > Airflow 2. > * It seems from some discussions with people - that migration from > MySQL to Postgres is possible and we could even develop a tool for > that for users who would like to migrate in Airflow 3. > * We also have MsSQL - which is fresh but I think there might be > stronger reasons for people to use it - especially if they are in > Azure/MS "world" (but we could also consider dropping it as well) > * I do not think there are "super-strong" reasons why people would > like to stick to MySQL. Yes, there are people who prefer it - but in > our case the DB is really an "internal" piece of Airflow. I can > imagine people use Postgres only for Airflow even if for the majority > of other things they use MySQL. > * MySQL was 25% last time we checked: > https://airflow.apache.org/blog/airflow-survey-2020/ but I bet a lot > of that was Composer 1.* (Which with Airflow 2 is gone). > > I wonder what others think? > > J. >
