Re: time sensitve: comparing performance to MySQL - Mailing list pgsql-advocacy

The information you are looking for is indeed hard to find.  A lot of
the information on the web is inaccurate or out of date.  For truly
unbiased comparisons you need to find independent entities that have
worked with both databases.  Unfortunately many database shops (but not
all) are reluctant to publish meaningful results.  FWIW, perhaps the
advocacy site for either database is not the best place to be looking.
Duty calls, however, so I will make my case.

Here is a site comparing the relative capabilities of the architectures:
http://www.commandprompt.com/images/mammoth_versus_dolphin_500.jpg

Here is an article I recently wrote about application development with
PG that may have some helpful information (no benchmarks though):
http://www.zeoslib.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19&mode=&o
rder=0&thold=0


The 'speed gap' is an oversimplification that does not really exist.
From my understanding, mysql is faster for:
1. insert operations
2. update operations for 1 record
3. bulk updates
4. typical 'where id=x' select statements that return 1 row

pg is faster for:
1. multiple user workloads for non read-only applications (thanks to
mvcc)
2. complex queries (better optimizer, statistics)
3. development
4. transactions vs. InnoDB

#2 is probably the most relevant in your case.  #3 is strictly my
opinion, but I'm pretty well informed.  Overall, PG has a much more
concurrency friendly architecture from the ground up.

Because you are coming from Oracle, there should be no question about
your decision.  PG has a feature set similar nearly as good as O's and a
lot of similar constructs.  Examples:
1. Sequences
2. Row level transaction locking
3. PL/SQL
4. ?? (I've never worked with O)

By the way, I think mysql is a decent product with some nice features.
If you are planning a web app with scripting in PHP or Perl, you could
make a decent argument for mysql.  I still think PG is better, tho.

Regards,
Merlin





-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Christian [mailto:matt@summersault.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 12:59 PM
To: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Cc: Mark Stosberg
Subject: [pgsql-advocacy] time sensitve: comparing performance to MySQL

Hello,

I've been tasked to do some quick research on Postgres vs. MySQL that I
need to present later today. I've already done a lot of Googlin' and
reviewing of the Postgres websites.

The project at hand will be a  high-volume website with many complex
queries. It will likely use replication. Performance will be most
important for SELECT statements.

The project will be ported form an existing codebase which uses Oracle
as the backend.

I understand that Postgres has been closing the speed gap with MySQL,
but I'm having trouble finding hard data on this. What specific
information is available in this area?

Your help is appreciated!

--Matt


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