MariaDB (and MySQL) is released in different versions with different behaviors. For backwards compatibility this can be managed with the sql_mode option.

Following you can find behavior differences which cannot be changed by this option. This can cause a regression in an existing application. There is no workaround available. The application needs to be adapted.

Queries with aggregated date types

For a database instance of MariaDB-10.1 or higher the result of the following query has changed.

SELECT MIN(NOW)

Before, this returned the current time as String, now this is of type Datetime.