Sphinx is an open source full text search server, designed from the ground up with performance, relevance (aka search quality), and integration simplicity in mind. It's written in C++ and works on Linux (RedHat, Ubuntu, etc), Windows, MacOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, and a few other systems.
The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using a simple programming model. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-avaiability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-availabile service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.
MariaDB is a database server that offers drop-in replacement functionality for MySQL. MariaDB is built by some of the original authors of MySQL, with assistance from the broader community of Free and open source software developers. In addition to the core functionality of MySQL, MariaDB offers a rich set of feature enhancements including alternate storage engines, server optimizations, and patches.
MariaDB is primarily driven by developers at Monty Program, a company founded by Michael "Monty" Widenius, the original author of MySQL, but this is not the whole story about MariaDB. On the "About MariaDB" page you will find more information about all participants in the MariaDB community, including storage engines XtraDB and PBXT.
Thank you for your interest in MariaDB. We look forward to providing you with a product and project that suits your needs, be it in a hobby blog deployment or an enterprise-grade datacenter!
