MySQL have unveiled details of their new storage engine intended to replace InnoDB as a crash-safe transactional alternative to MyISAM.

Blog post from Monty (MySQL creator): Monty says: The Maria engine is released

Docs: Maria Docs - MySQLForge Wiki

For those who missed the news, Innobase (the company who develop the InnoDB engine) was brought by Oracle a few years back so the MySQL guys have been working hard to build a home-brewed replacement for the InnoDB engine since.

Alan