The helper function provides map-like access to row values. This is used
to retrieve the values for all MariaDB 10.0+ versions as there are
differences in the returned results between 10.1 and 10.2.
That allows the version to be updated and read atomically. If
major/minor/patch are stored as separate variables, you can get an
inconsistent set. Now it may be out of date by the time it is used,
but it will never be internally inconsistent.
