From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-Id: <200307202323.h6KNN8M00166@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL vs. MySQL
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0307071128500.4451-100000@css120.ihs.com>
To: "scott.marlowe" <scott.marlowe@ihs.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 19:23:08 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: Brian Tarbox <btarbox@theworld.com>, michael.mattox@verideon.com,
	Rafal Kedziorski <rafcio@polonium.de>, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
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I think the issue with multiple users is that a car is good for moving a
few people, but it can't move lots of large boxes. A truck can move
large boxes, but it can't move a few people efficiently.  PostgreSQL is
more like a truck, while MySQL is more like a car.

As an aside, I think Solaris is slower than other OS's because it is
built to scale efficiently to many CPU's, and that takes a performance
hit in a machine with just a few CPU's, though they are working on
tuning those cases.

Of course, this is all just a generalization.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

scott.marlowe wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Brian Tarbox wrote:
> 
> > I'm actually leaving this list but I can answer this question.  Our results
> > were with a single user and we were running Inodb.  We were running on
> > RedHat 8.0 / 9.0 with vanilla linux settings.
> 
> Hi Brian, I just wanted to add that if you aren't testing your setup for 
> multiple users, you are doing yourself a disservice.  The performance of 
> your app with one user is somewhat interesting, the performance of the 
> system with a dozen or a hundred users is of paramount importance.
> 
> A server that dies under heavy parallel load is useless, no matter how 
> fast it ran when tested for one user.  Conversely, one would prefer a 
> server that was a little slow for single users but can hold up under load.
> 
> When I first built my test box a few years ago, I tested postgresql / 
> apache / php at 100 or more parallel users.  That's where things start 
> getting ugly, and you've got to test for it now, before you commit to a 
> platform.
> 
> Postgresql is designed to work on anything out of the box, which means 
> it's not optimized for high performance, but for running on old Sparc 2s 
> with 128 meg of ram.  If you're going to test it against MySQL, be fair to 
> yourself and performance tune them both before testing, they're 
> performance on vanilla linux with vanilla configuration tuning teachs you 
> little about how they'll behave in production on heavy iron.
> 
> Good luck on your testing, and please, don't quit testing at the first 
> sign one or the other is faster, be throrough and complete, including 
> heavy parallel load testing with reads AND writes.  Know the point at 
> which each system begins to fail / become unresponsive, and how they 
> behave in overload.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
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