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Comparing MySQL Performance
An anonymous reader writes "With the introduction of the 2.6 Linux kernel, FreeBSD 5-STABLE, Solaris 10, and now NetBSD 2.0, you might be wondering which of them offers superior database performance.
These two articles will show you how to benchmark operating system performance using MySQL on these operating systems so you can find out for yourself if you're missing out. While this may not necessarily be indicative of overall system performance or overall database application performance, it will tell you specifically how well MySQL performs on your platform."
Valid point. RedHat Linux is tuned for Oracle - including a larger shared memory region. A more valid comparison would be if each OS was first tuned for the database.
Something like shared memory, which is used for sorting, caching, and hashes, would slow a database down quite a bit if there was not enough.
I work with multi-terabyte databases daily, and by my observation, the flavor of UNIX is irrelevant if the IPC resources are adequate. When you're scanning a gig from disk, all DMA, an extra second in the kernel doesn't count in the O().
Nevertheless, this is a very good benchmark conducted in a fair manner. I was pretty much surprised at how the guy lacking support (from Solaris no less) went on to find out by himself how to increase performance. This also underlies the point made by many in the "netbsd vs. free" benchmarK about the focus of FreeBSD being SMP in the past few years ... which has payed off nicely it seems.
What about Mac OS X? I know (actually, not really) that Solaris doesn't run on Apple hardware, but it would be interesting to compare the same stuff on an Xserve and also be able to test the OS X performance.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
What about the Firebird relational database?
Good point. "Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL-92 features" [emphasis added] PostgreSQL "supports SQL92 and SQL99" [emphasis added]. "New code modules added to Firebird are licensed under the Initial Developer's Public License. (IDPL). The original modules released by Inprise are licensed under the InterBase Public License v.1.0. Both licences are modified versions of the Mozilla Public License v.1.1." On the other hand, "PostgreSQL is released under the BSD license." Other than that they are mostly comparable, so you have risen a very good point. If you don't need standard SQL support and the license is acceptable, Firebird is a very good option.
He was modded offtopic, because this article was about OS benchmarks, not database benchmarks. The title of TFA is "Using MySQL to benchmark OS performance"...so its seeing which OS mySQL runs best on, not which database is best.
While your post is thorough and accurate,
you glossed over the fact that MySQL is now dual licensed. This DOES have repercussions. The GPL version can only be used by GPL software OR as a special exception. The special exception is made for PHP (and maybe others). If you are a Bank and choose MySQL you have to BUY a license.
I wonder how much there is to the MySQL great for websites (many read, few write) and the PHP license exception.
MySQL 4+ is not the MySQL that we all came to know and love in the 3.x days. Previously, I used MySQL 3.x but when I needed to upgrade, I moved to PostgreSQL because of the new license alone.
Let me re iterate my take. PHP license allows you to make commercial websites with it. MySQL allows its GPL license to be used with PHP regardless of purpose of the PHP scripts by special exception. Had there been no special exception, we'd have seen the downfall of MySQL and the upshoot of PostgreSQL or SQLite.
As a user/admin of all 3, I find that you can either use PostgreSQL or get away with using SQLite. Incedentally, try using SQLite with SQLRelay if you need network access for SQLite.
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