Re: PostgreSQL a slow DB? - Mailing list pgsql-novice

Sheesh, the day after I unsubscribe due to lack of time I get this email.  Before you take some anecdotal words on the subject, think about it.  MySQL is fine for running some databases for websites and webapps.  SQLLite is also.  But they do not scale the way PostgreSQL does.  Are these people comparing some measly little Wordpress database running MySQL against a huge Postgres database with a ton of data and a ton of stored-proc functionality coded into it? 

I would need to see apples-to-apples benchmarks done by comparing the various database systems running the same or very similar databases.  And do it for small-size databases all the way up through large ones, to see how well they all perform as you increase the scale.  Oh, and you may have to dumb down the benchmark schema used to account for all the functionality that PostgreSQL has that don't exist in the others. 

We once, at a customer's insistence, ported a fairly complex schema with a lot of stored proc functionality from PostgreSQL to Oracle.  Its was based on managerial fiat, not from some technical reason.  It was very time consuming and difficult.  There were just so many features that we made use of that Oracle had no counterpart for, and we had to write a lot of custom code to implement.

If you have a tiny database, with tiny requirements, and have to run on old, slow equipment, then maybe it doesn't matter what database you use, they'll all perform the same.  But if you need to do real work, I'll take PostgreSQL. 

The only time I've heard of or experienced speed issues was in the days of running Postgres on Windows via cygwin.  And the culprit there was cygwin, not Postgres.  Cygwin is slow.  Its not meant for that kind of production use.  Postgres would have to run on top of it and suffered from cygwin's slowness.  But these days Postgres runs native on Windows.  I don't have to run Postgres on Windows anymore, so I don't know how the native Win32 Postgres performs, but with cygwin out of the loop it should be fine. 

Perhaps the many rumblings you heard were from people still dealing with cygwin on Windows?

McC


Bruce Momjian wrote:

ebcorder@rockwellcollins.com wrote: 

Hi All

I started using PostgreSQL\Postgis in January.    Lately I have been
reading on the internet many rumblings about PostgreSQL being slower than
MySQL/SQLLite etc etc.  Comparisons made were routine inserts , updates,
and deletes.   Is any of this true?   If so,are there methods to speed
things up?    I used the Explain Analyze command on portgesSQL it seemed
fast although I have not run any other DB's.
I know when comparison tests are performed they can be tilted on these
internet sites.  But I see so many people declaring PostgreSQL to be the
slowest I am thinking where there is smoke there's fire.   

Lots of people still think Elvis is alive.  :-)