Oracle has done a great technical work with MySQL. Specifically a nice job has been done around security. There is one useful feature that exists in Oracle MySQL and that currently does not exist in MariaDB.
Oracle MySQL offers the possibility from within the server to generate asymetric key pairs. It is then possible use them from within the MySQL server to encrypt, decrypt or sign data without exiting the MySQL server. This is a great feature. This is defined as a set of UDF (User Defined Function : CREATE FUNCTION asymmetric_decrypt, asymmetric_encrypt, asymmetric_pub_key … SONAME 'openssl_udf.so';).
This is a feature I would love to see in MariaDB.
It is impossible to reuse Oracle code for MariaDB implementation. The Oracle MySQL implementation of this feature is closed source 🙁 . Most Oracle MySQL security features are unfortunately closed source (authentication plugin, audit plugin, …). To use these security features on premise or in the cloud you need to run Oracle MySQL Enterprise Edition that requires paying an annual subscription.
It would be great to have this feature open source in MariaDB. Contrary to Oracle MySQL All MariaDB security features are open source. Having security features open source is almost mandatory now that GDPR is effective.
This feature relies on openSSL library and should not be complex to implement on MariaDB.