mariadb-client has bunch of rearly used tools. Especially extra tools
written in Perl, could probably be moved out, to make the core client
(ligher and not pull perl dependencies).
Funnilly enough there is already mariadb-client-core that almost tick
the boxes, but mariadb-dump and restore probably should be considered
core. Maybe mariadb-admin too to some extent.
There are a number of packages in Debian, that incorrectly depend on
virtual-mysql-client or default-mysql-client or mariadb-client, because
possibly it is not possible to do the same with with -core variant.
Maybe move some of the utilities (including all Perl ones), to
mariadb-client-extras or something like that. I would not even put it as
suggested or recommended of the main package.
Cheers.