Open Source Databases Revisited

pusakat writes "If you've been following performance comparisons of the different Open Source databases, Tim Perdue revisits PostgreSQL v. MySQL with production data from SourceForge and comes up with interesting results. This may be fodder for yet another 'my database is better than your database' exchange from both camps but the results are interesting anyway."

Comments

Your Mileage May Vary

[StormyMonday]

Please note that this benchmark (and any benchmark, for that matter) applies only to the system and application that it's testing. Database applications vary so widely that it's very difficult to get any meaningful numbers outside of very specific areas.

As an example, I recently ran some tests that came up with the exact opposite results. My application is a large message tracking database. Query speed is secondary; insertion speed is critical. MySQL handles my test data set in 20 minutes; PostgreSQL takes over 3 hours (!). For this application, PostgreSQL is Right Straight Out.

Other notes:

1. PostgreSQL's tables took up roughly twice the space of MySQL's.

2. MySQL's lack of transactions is a real pain. I can, however, work around it (in this particular application, at least).

3. MySQL's "text indexing" is useless. The evaluation function returns every record that contains any of the search terms; there is no way I've found to require all search terms. No documentation, of course.

4. The latest beta of MySQL can use Berkeley DB tables to get real transaction handling. Unfortunately, this is even slower than PostgreSQL.

Obvious conclusion: Run your own tests and draw your own conclusions.

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Test Methods Allert

[CaptainZapp]

Did anybody else notice that PostgreSQL actually improved performance with more concurrent users ?

The only explanation here is the caching behavior of the data base. Howerver, this also indicates that benchmarking databases is not a really trivial task, because exactly such effects must be considered for database benchmarks.

Further, besides a few graphs. The test says actually nothing different then: PostgreSQL improved strongly, while MySQL is a dog. Actually it says nothing at all.

Not that I mind the results. I worked with both databases briefly and believe that PostgreSQL is far closer to an industrial strength database (Lack of transaction control disqualifies MySQL for that in the first place). Nevertheless, I think the results really lack any significance.