How to Choose Amazon Redshift Over MariaDB in PostgreSQL

Why should I use Amazon Redshift over MariaDB for analytics?

Explains when and why an analytics team should favor Amazon Redshift’s columnar, MPP architecture over MariaDB’s row-oriented OLTP engine.

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Description

Why pick Amazon Redshift instead of MariaDB?

Redshift shines for analytics workloads that scan millions of rows, aggregate large fact tables, and serve many concurrent users. Its columnar storage, massive parallel processing (MPP), and automatic compression eliminate the row-by-row I/O limits that slow MariaDB.

Does Redshift scale better than MariaDB?

Yes. You can add or resize nodes with a single API call, gaining linear performance improvements. MariaDB relies on vertical scaling or read replicas, which become complex at terabyte scale.

How does pricing differ?

Redshift charges by node-hours and managed storage, letting teams pause clusters or switch to Redshift Serverless for bursty workloads. MariaDB licensing is free, but infrastructure, replication, and operations drive up total cost of ownership at scale.

What SQL features make analytics easier?

Redshift supports columnar CREATE TABLE with sort keys, distribution styles, materialized views, and federated queries to S3. These speed up joins on Orders and OrderItems far beyond MariaDB’s InnoDB engine.

When should I still use MariaDB?

Choose MariaDB for high-frequency OLTP: order inserts, point reads, and strict ACID transactions. Keep customer checkout writes on MariaDB, push nightly snapshots to Redshift for reporting.

Best practice: hybrid architecture

Stream data from MariaDB to Redshift using AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) or Kafka Connect. Maintain a star schema in Redshift, and expose dashboards via QuickSight or Galaxy’s editor.

Why How to Choose Amazon Redshift Over MariaDB in PostgreSQL is important

How to Choose Amazon Redshift Over MariaDB in PostgreSQL Example Usage


-- Daily revenue in Redshift (columnar scan, parallelized)
SELECT order_date,
       SUM(total_amount) AS daily_sales
FROM   redshift.public.orders
GROUP  BY order_date
ORDER  BY order_date DESC;

-- Same query in MariaDB may lock rows and perform full table scan, causing latency at >100M rows.

How to Choose Amazon Redshift Over MariaDB in PostgreSQL Syntax


-- Example: replicate MariaDB 'Orders' into Redshift and optimize
CREATE TABLE redshift.public.orders (
    id            BIGINT IDENTITY(1,1),
    customer_id   BIGINT,
    order_date    DATE,
    total_amount  NUMERIC(12,2)
)
DISTKEY(customer_id)
SORTKEY(order_date);

-- Load data with COPY from S3 dump
COPY redshift.public.orders
FROM 's3://company-data/orders/'
IAM_ROLE 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RedshiftCopy'
DELIMITER ',' CSV;

-- MariaDB equivalent (row store, no dist/sort keys)
CREATE TABLE mariadb.orders (
    id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    customer_id BIGINT,
    order_date DATE,
    total_amount DECIMAL(12,2)
);

Common Mistakes

Treating Redshift like OLTP—issuing single-row INSERT/UPDATE statements. Fix: batch load with COPY or INSERT SELECT to leverage columnar writes.
Using default DISTKEYs and SORTKEYs. Fix: pick a distribution key frequently joined (e.g., customer_id) and sort key used in WHERE clauses (e.g., order_date).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Is Redshift fully ACID?

Redshift offers serializable isolation for single statements but lacks multi-statement transactions across nodes. Use MariaDB for strict OLTP consistency.

Can I query MariaDB data live from Redshift?

Yes. Redshift Spectrum and federated queries let you join external MariaDB tables without loading, but performance is best after ingesting data into Redshift.