Re: PostgreSQL vs. MySQL

I think the issue with multiple users is that a car is good for moving a
few people, but it can't move lots of large boxes. A truck can move
large boxes, but it can't move a few people efficiently. PostgreSQL is
more like a truck, while MySQL is more like a car.

As an aside, I think Solaris is slower than other OS's because it is
built to scale efficiently to many CPU's, and that takes a performance
hit in a machine with just a few CPU's, though they are working on
tuning those cases.

Of course, this is all just a generalization.

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scott.marlowe wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Brian Tarbox wrote:
>
> > I'm actually leaving this list but I can answer this question. Our results
> > were with a single user and we were running Inodb. We were running on
> > RedHat 8.0 / 9.0 with vanilla linux settings.
>
> Hi Brian, I just wanted to add that if you aren't testing your setup for
> multiple users, you are doing yourself a disservice. The performance of
> your app with one user is somewhat interesting, the performance of the
> system with a dozen or a hundred users is of paramount importance.
>
> A server that dies under heavy parallel load is useless, no matter how
> fast it ran when tested for one user. Conversely, one would prefer a
> server that was a little slow for single users but can hold up under load.
>
> When I first built my test box a few years ago, I tested postgresql /
> apache / php at 100 or more parallel users. That's where things start
> getting ugly, and you've got to test for it now, before you commit to a
> platform.
>
> Postgresql is designed to work on anything out of the box, which means
> it's not optimized for high performance, but for running on old Sparc 2s
> with 128 meg of ram. If you're going to test it against MySQL, be fair to
> yourself and performance tune them both before testing, they're
> performance on vanilla linux with vanilla configuration tuning teachs you
> little about how they'll behave in production on heavy iron.
>
> Good luck on your testing, and please, don't quit testing at the first
> sign one or the other is faster, be throrough and complete, including
> heavy parallel load testing with reads AND writes. Know the point at
> which each system begins to fail / become unresponsive, and how they
> behave in overload.
>
>
>
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