Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS

Which exact package did you install? The script is present in mariadb-plugin-spider_10.2.12+maria-trusty_amd64.deb as far as I can see.

I installed MariaDB 10.2.12 from the apt repository;
add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/mariadb/repo/10.2/ubuntu xenial main'

apt-get install mariadb-server

install_spider.sql was not installed.

Could you please confirm if I need to install it separately ?

Well, naturally, if you only installed mariadb-server, the spider engine itself wasn't installed, and neither were any scripts associated with it. Spider comes in a separate package.

What is the URL link to the package you listed above?

Dermot, if you're not aware, you can find packages with apt-cache:

sudo apt-cache search mariadb spider

mariadb-plugin-spider - Spider storage engine for MariaDB

mariadb-plugin-spider-dbgsym - Debug symbols for mariadb-plugin-spider

Thus, the package you want to install is called "mariadb-plugin-spider".

Since you are using Ubuntu 14.04 (trusty), you should also use the respective repo (your add-apt-repository command points to xenial which is a newer release), unless you have a good reason to use a repo from newer release.

sudo add-apt-repository -r 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/mariadb/repo/10.2/ubuntu xenial main'  # remove xenial repo

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/mariadb/repo/10.2/ubuntu trusty main'  # add trusty repo

Thanks Juha. The spider engine is successfully installed.

Could you please confirm if it is prudent to use sharding with the spider engine in a Production database as the MariaDB doc. state that the latest spider engine version is a "gamma" release.
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/library/spider-storage-engine-overview/

I don't have any experience with the spider engine so can't comment on that myself. (to be honest, this was the first time I even looked up what it is)
Maybe you should ask on the mailing list?

Hello Juha I appreciate your feedback on "spider" and support in resolving this ticket.