Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 15:40:58 -0400
From: Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: control of benchmarks (was: Thousands of tables)
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On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 02:01:59PM -0400, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> They did this for the same reason as everyone else.  They don't want
> non-experts tuning the database incorrectly, writing a benchmark paper
> about it, and making the software look bad.

I agree that Oracle is a fine system, and I have my doubts about the
likelihood Oracle will fall over under fairly heavy loads.  But I
think the above is giving Oracle Corp a little too much credit. 

Corporations exist to make money, and the reason they prohibit doing
anything with their software and then publishing it without their
approval is because they want to control all the public perception of
their software, whether deserved or not.  Every user of any large
software system (Oracle or otherwise) has their favourite horror
story about the grotty corners of that software;
commercially-licensed people just aren't allowed to prove it in
public.  It's not only the clueless Oracle is protecting themselves
against; it's also the smart, accurate, but expensive corner-case
testers.  I get to complain that PostgreSQL is mostly fast but has
terrible outlier performance problems.  I can think of another system
that I've used that certainly had a similar issue, but I couldn't
show you the data to prove it.  Everyone who used it knew about it,
though.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
A certain description of men are for getting out of debt, yet are
against all taxes for raising money to pay it off.
		--Alexander Hamilton