From MariaDB CTO to Neo4j: Ivan Zoratti’s Journey into Graph Databases

If you still don’t know what MariaDB is, you might be an alien from another planet. In 2018, MariaDB was the second‑fastest growing relational database system after PostgreSQL, making it the most commercially promising open‑source innovation in the database field. You probably already know that. What you may not know is that MariaDB’s former CTO, Ivan Zoratti, joined the Neo4j team last year as Product Management Director, overseeing the release of Neo4j 3.5. I sat down with Ivan after the 3.5 release to hear his story of growth and development in the database world.

Can you introduce yourself and your past work?

Ivan: I have been working in technology R&D for nearly 35 years. I fell in love with computers the first time I saw one.

It all started in the mid‑80s at a technical high school in Italy that had an IT department and a DEC mini‑computer. After school I stayed in the computer lab, reading about PDP‑11 and programming.

My first database was Digital’s Rdb (now Oracle Rdb), one of the most advanced relational databases of the 1980s.

Fifteen years later I joined MySQL AB, the Swedish company behind MySQL, in 2005. That marked a milestone, after which I devoted myself full‑time to open‑source products, especially databases.

Tell us about your time at MySQL and MariaDB.

Ivan: MySQL was a Swedish company based in Silicon Valley. In 2008 Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB.

I was the Director of Sales Engineering at MySQL. After the acquisition I became Director of System Engineering, responsible for all Sun software outside of Java and virtualization.

When Oracle bought Sun in 2010, a group of us from MySQL decided to leave Oracle and start a new company called SkySQL.

Initially I was the Service Director, and we decided to both provide services and develop software, so I became the CTO. We later merged with Monty Program, founded by MySQL creator Monty Widenius, and together we built MariaDB, a MySQL fork, under the new company name MariaDB.

Can you give a 30‑second summary of MariaDB for newcomers?

Ivan: MariaDB is a branch of MySQL that can replace MySQL while keeping applications working the same way. The main differences are behind‑the‑scenes improvements for DBAs and DevOps that MySQL lacks.

MariaDB introduced multi‑source and parallel replication. In MySQL, replication typically involves one primary and multiple slaves, originally synchronous, which can limit performance.

MariaDB added parallel replication with multi‑threaded execution on replicas, a major improvement. MySQL later added similar features but lagged behind MariaDB.

Thus MariaDB often leads the RDBMS space with new functionality.

Why did you join Neo4j? What attracted you to graph databases?

Ivan: About three years ago a former colleague, Anthony Flynn, who had moved from MySQL to Neo4j, invited me to a local Neo4j tech meetup. I was fascinated by the graph database concept and its stark difference from relational databases.

Later I met Jim Webber, Philip Rathle, and other Neo4j team members, and I was impressed by the talent. After many discussions with Philip, Neo4j’s VP of Product, I accepted the offer.

How do you transition from the relational world to the graph world?

Ivan: The graph database community is friendly and passionate about how graphs solve problems. I respect that passion and believe it’s essential. While relational, document, or key‑value stores excel at certain tasks, all database technologies can coexist and complement each other.

Neo4j, as the leading graph database today, lets you solve tasks quickly that would be cumbersome with a traditional RDBMS. Many perfect use cases exist where Neo4j is the best fit.

Sometimes I need to completely discard relational thinking and redesign for the graph paradigm, though I still use relational or KV databases when appropriate.

What excites you most about being on the Neo4j team?

Ivan: One of the best things about my work is the endless opportunities to explore new use cases and push the product beyond its current capabilities.

I look forward to elevating Neo4j to larger data scales, extending its enterprise solutions, and leveraging its natural data structure for AI, machine learning, and big‑data workloads.

In the future, Neo4j will become the graph database platform for countless applications and services, with limitless possibilities for product expansion.

How can the Neo4j community stay in touch with you?

Personal blog

LinkedIn

SlideShare

Twitter (though I use it sparingly)

GitHub

Final advice for readers?

Ivan: For those who have read my blog—or are seeing it for the first time—you may notice I haven’t yet written about Neo4j. I plan to contribute many ideas to upcoming Neo4j releases because I believe in the value of open source and developer communities, not just code but sharing ideas and achieving goals.

Technical community discussions make things better. By sharing ideas, commenting, and engaging, we can improve together. Stay tuned for more articles from me in the future.