Re: [HACKERS] follow-up on PC Week Labs benchmark results

Don Baccus wrote:
>
> >> In particular, I'd like to compare IB 6 with PG 7.x and MySQL later this
> >> year (I didn't benchmark MySQL this time because I ran out of time, but
> >> would very much like to.)
>
> Actually, this slipped by me the first time.
>
> Why benchmark MySQL? It's not a real RDBMS, it doesn't even pretend
> to support ACID semantics. Clearly it is going to be faster than
> databases that do because supporting ACID semantics is expensive.

I remember some reports of it still being slower on more complex queries.

> This would be comparing apples with oranges, meaningless.
>
> Now, don't get me wrong, for many application spaces mySQL is fine. If
> you're running a bboard system for overclockers, for instance, you probably
> would sigh in relief if disaster struck and you lost all your data.
>
> On the other hand, if you're running an e-commerce site losing data is
> not cool and mySQL is not appropriate.
>
> Rather than benchmark, it would seem more useful to educate your readers
> about the meaning of ACID, and how to decide when you need it and when you
> don't. That would seem far more important, because in my experience many
> people don't understand that there is a real difference between a program
> that executes a subset of SQL in a simple manner, and an RDBMS that
> passes the ACID test and happens to be driven by SQL queries.

You probably can get ACID behaviour from MySQL by serializing at transaction
level ;)

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Hannu