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I saw a similar question asked before but I didn't get enough supporting information
Does anyone know any new information on this?
Can MariaDB connector (driver) be used instead of the MySQL connector (driver) when connecting to AWS Aurora cluster MySQL instance?
Can MariaDB connector (driver) be used instead of the MySQL connector (driver) when connecting to AWS Aurora cluster MySQL instance?
Yes. I've personally used neither the MariaDB Connector/J nor the MySQL Connector/J against AWS Aurora cluster MySQL. However, according to the MariaDB documentation on its Connector/J - my emphasis:
MariaDB Connector/J is used to connect applications developed in Java to MariaDB and MySQL databases using the standard JDBC API. The library is LGPL licensed.
So, MariaDB's Connector/J officially supports MySQL databases, and Amazon Aurora MySQL is supposed to be a drop-in replacement for MySQL.
Also, note that according to the same documentation, MariaDB Connector/J has a special 'aurora' failover parameter. See MariaDB's Knowledge Base article Failover and High availability with MariaDB Connector/J for more details.
I've not found anything specifically mentioning Aurora in the MySQL Connector/J documentation, so it would seem MariaDB's connector could actually be a better choice.
It should also be mentioned that the licences are different: MariaDB Connector/J is LGPL v2.1+ and MySQL Community Connector/J is GLPv2 with a few additions.
As of 2023, maria jdbc driver should not be used to connect to aurora mysql instances.
From https://mariadb.com/kb/en/about-mariadb-connector-j/
driver 3.0 is a complete rewrite of the connector. Specific support for aurora has not been implemented in 3.0, since it relies on pipelining. Aurora is not compatible with pipelining. Issues for Aurora were piling up without the community proposing any PR for them and without access for us to test those modifications. (2.x version has a 5 years support).
and also the 2.7.X line also has problems with aurora mysql instances https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/CONJ-1033
