Re: Open Source Database Routs Competition in New Benchmark Tests

At 09:26 AM 8/15/00 +0200, Kaare Rasmussen wrote:
>I think a bit of explanation is required for this story:
>
>http://www.newsalert.com/bin/story?StoryId=CozDUWbKbytiXnZy&FQ=Linux&Nav=na
-search-&StoryTitle=Linux
>
>Up until now, the MySQL people have been boasting performance as the
>product's great advantage. Now this contradicts thi sfor the first time. I
>believe it has to do with the test. Perhaps MySQL is faster when you just
>do one simple SELECT * FROM table, and that it has never really been
>tested in a real-life (or as close as possible) environment?

It's no secret that MySQL falls apart under load when there are inserts
and updates in the mix. They do table-level locking. If you read
various threads about "hints and tricks" in MySQL-land concerning
performance in high-concurrency (i.e. web site) situations, there are
all sorts of suggestions about periodically caching copies of tables for
reading so readers don't get blocked, etc.

The sickness lies in the fact that the folks writing these complex workarounds
are still convinced that MySQL is the fastest, most efficient DB tool
available,
that the lack of transactions is making their system faster, and that the
concurrency problems they see are no worse than are seen with "real" a RDBMS
like Oracle or Postgres.

The level of ignorance in the MySQL world is just stunning at times, mostly
due to a lot of openly dishonest (IMO) claims and advocacy by the authors
of MySQL, in their documentation, for instance. A significant percentage
of MySQL users seem to take these statements as gospel and are offended when
you suggest, for instance, that table-level locking isn't such a hot idea
for a DB used to drive a popular website.

At least now when they all shout "Slashdot's popular, and they use MySQL"
we can answer, "yeah, but the Slashdot folks are the ones who paid
for the integration of MySQL with the SleepyCat backend, and guess why?"
And the Slashdot folks have been openly talking about rewriting their
code to be more DB agnostic (I refuse to call MySQL an RDBMS) and about
perhaps switching to Oracle in the future. Maybe tests like this and more
user advocacy will convince them to consider Postgres!

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza(at)pacifier(dot)com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net.