MariaDB is a drop in replacement for MySQL. Combined these two SQL databases drive the Internet as the large majority of content management systems use either of them as back end.
Interestingly MySQL was originally designed by the same developer who later started the MariaDB branch after Oracle acquired MySQL. And contrary to what you may suppose ‘MySQL’ should not be considered to mean ‘my SQL database database system’. The original developer has two daughers, My and Maria, and named the systems after them.
The big advantage over e.g. MS Access of using MariaDB as your database sysem, even on a stand alone computer, is robustness and practically unlimited database size. MS Access still crashes at 2 GB.
MS Access can be used as a front end to MariaDB, using ODBC drivers. LibreOffice can also be used as front end. Used that way the Office systems provide ability to create some nice data entry forms and complex reports. MS Access can certainly compete with much more expensive report generators in that role, allowing creation of extreme complex reports.
MariaDB has been developing at a more rapid pace than MySQL since it branched off and has now become the default installation in many Linux distributions. A windows version, which also includes a graphical front end, HeidiSQL, can be downloaded from the MariaDB site:
MySQL can be found here: https://www.mysql.com/