As part of the open-source software on PASE for i, MariaDB is available in the ibm repository. However, it seems like the MariaDB Connector/ODBC is not available.
Following the Building MariaDB Connector/ODBC From the Git Repository instructions does not work, since it appears that PASE is not supported. Forking it and modifying the source + build toolchain to work in PASE seems like a potential (but unattractive) option.
Is there a MySQL ODBC driver that can be used instead? Have I missed an available package? I also noticed that Zend / Seiden / etc have discussed using PHP with MySQL / MariaDB on PASE for i, how is PHP connecting to MariaDB in that case?
IBM does not currently provide an ODBC interface for connecting to MariaDB. Most high level languages provide a MySQL/MariaDB interface which does not require the client libraries (eg. PyMySQL).