From a MySQL client connection, how can I determine which MySQL server is in use? (e.g. MySQL or MariaDB)

Question

I maintain an opensource project that supports multiple database backends. Users can either MySQL, MariaDB, Postgres etc..

There is a variation in behaviour between MySQL and MariaDB and I need to determine which database server is in use.

Given a MySQL connection only: how can I determine which MySQL server flavor I am talking to? MySQL or MariaDB? Is there a magic SQL query?

Note: select version(); does not provide any info on whether we are speaking with a MySQL or MariaDB server.

Answer 1

show variables like 'version%';

MySQL: https://dbfiddle.uk/jiksphR2

Variable_name	Value
version	8.0.30
version_comment	MySQL Community Server - GPL

MariaDB: https://dbfiddle.uk/o_jYif0i

Variable_name	Value
version	10.6.9-MariaDB-1:10.6.9+maria~deb11
version_comment	mariadb.org binary distribution

There are additional version variables for the OS, the architecture, and so on, but these two above are the most relevant.