Re: 7.4b1 vs 7.3.4 performance

It's quite a bit faster for me. I've been doing a lot of reading and
comparing the latest versions of PostgreSQL (7.3.4), Firebird
(1.5RC5), MySQL (InnoDB, 4.0.14) on a dual P3-850 using Apache2.0.47
and PHP 4.3.3RC4 on Redhat 9. I loaded the databases up with identical
schemas and a couple of tables with 70k rows each.

I've been a MySQL user for a long time, but I need/want a lot of the
features that it doesn't have for my next project. Plus, stuff like
referential integrity and transactions in MySQL are pretty weak
compared to the others.

I've been trying to get an idea of how the DBs would perform, since
(SELECT) speed is a primary concern. My tests consist of looping
various simple operations I'll be doing in a PHP script, e.g.
connecting, grabbing a single (random for this test) row, and
disconnecting, say 1000 times. Or I've got one that will grab a block
of 1000 rows (from a random position) with a left join. Pretty simple
stuff.

This weekend I upgraded to 7.4b1 and ran my tests. There was
significant improvements across the board. PostgreSQL's times went
down some 25-50% for these things. And this is using a stock config (I
know, I know, I'm going to fix it). (BTW, should changing config
parameters show any improvements the tests I'm doing aren't causing it
to swap? I know it's mandatory when I place it under load...)

With 7.3.4, PostgreSQL generally fell midway between MySQL and
Firebird. With 7.4b1, (I can't recall many specifics right now, but)
some operations were actually faster that MySQL! Some operations were
slower (inserting xxxxx records, I believe). But for the majority of
my tests, PostgreSQL was neck-and-neck with MySQL. Very impressive.

Unfortunately, Firebird was consistently third. I had high hopes for
it, but it was definitely slower. I know they're looking heavily at
performance for 2.0, which will be interesting to see.

Granted, these tests didn't accurately simulate a real-world load, but
that won't be doable until the project is done. Anyway, I'm going to
use PostgreSQL!

Jacob Hanson
jacdx@jacobhanson.com

> (Bruce Momjian) wrote:
>I wonder why pgbench is _so_ much faster on 7.4.  I can't think of
>anything that would make that large an improvement.