Re: database contest results

On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 00:10 +0200, Andreas Pflug wrote:
> > The author himself said he didn't have time. I didn't mean to be
> > insulting, and I apologize if I was. 120 versus 3000 seems like the
> > MySQL entry guys were operating with an entirely separate set of
> > assumptions, and spent much more time optimizing it and determining the
> > exact contest requirements.
> >
> Maybe you should have had a look at the article before speculating.
> Contest requirement was very easy: take the DS sample and make it fast
> on a given average PC hardware. The MySQL guys were able to take a

Before I posted, I read the English press release along with the thread
on this list and on pgsql-general, but I don't read German (I only found
the English translation now). I also read your statement in this thread
that the MySQL guys tuned the application "to access the database as
rare [sic] as possible using memcache."

To me, this fact alone means that the author of the PostgreSQL entry
operated under different assumptions than the author of the MySQL entry.
Even "simple" contest requirements can be interpreted differently due to
assumptions. For instance, maybe the author of the PostgreSQL entry made
the wrong assumptions because, as you put it, the contest was "wrong
labeled app optimization"?

I stand by my original statement that it was more about understanding
and adapting to the contest than anything to do with the technical
database details (like storage engines).

Regards,
Jeff Davis