Hi,
in the current edition of the german computer magazine c't the results
of the database contest, which they announced last year, has finally
been published. It was based on a very simple DVD-Store web application
from Dell. [1]
Back then I spent some time modifying the original php5 application to
use PostgreSQL. I've written some stored procedures in C and optimized
the schema at obvious places. I've been short on time, though, and
couldn't do everything I wished to do. Most importantly connection
pooling didn't seem to make it into the final entry I have submitted. :-(
That might be one reason for the disappointing performance result: last
place, just before the disqualified entries. The performance trophy
(once again) has gone to the MySQL Benchmark Team... [2]
With that result I fear I did a disservice to PostgreSQL. Once again it
seems to be just slower than MySQL. I'm sorry for that. Especially
because other strengths of PostgreSQL didn't get mentioned.
OTOH I at least hacked up something. My entry was the only counting one
using PostgreSQL - which is surprising and disappointing me. (The only
other PosgreSQL entry from Alvar C.H. Freude unfortunately got
disqualified because it was sent in too late [3]). Didn't the PostgreSQL
community know about that contest? IMHO it would have been worthwhile
to start a community project and submit an entry. Just to get rid of
that 'too-slow'-image PostgreSQL still has.
At least I have learned: next time I'll try to start a community project
for such a contest!
Regards
Markus
[1]: Read more about it on http://www.ctmagazin.de/dbcontest (german,
there are english translations of the contest rules... somewhere...)
[2]: My solution (PHP5/PostgreSQL 8.1) got 120 opm (operations per
minute? Dunno anymore what that meant exactly), the best PHP5/MySQL
solution got 3664 opm. Another interesting one (IMO) was MonetDB with
1833 opm. The Java/DB2 Express one got 1537 opm, Java/Oracle 10g Express
1412 opm...
[3]: I'm quite sure Alvar's entry would have performed much better than
mine. AFAICT he has written a quite well optimized apache/mod_perl/pgsql
solution.