Re: PostgreSQL x Oracle

On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 08:59:14AM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> No, the answer is "We don't know which is faster," and it is quite
> certain that we /can't/ know with any degree of certainty.
>
> The licensing arrangements for Oracle (and many similar products) deny
> the ability to do performance comparisons.

No they don't.  The deny the ability to _publish_ the benchmarks.  If
you have sufficient funds and time, you could do all the benchmarks
yourself.

You could also rely on the TPC for data.  Since they publish the
test specs, the comparison is at least apples to apples.  They happen
to be really strange, bio-engineered apples, with each system
hand-crafted for the purposes of the test at hand.  And of course,
the deeper pockets of Oracle provide ample oppotunity for them to try
more often.  But you still get actually useful comparisons in that
case.  Whether they are sufficiently analogous to the application you
are trying to build is another question entirely.  (Admittedly, in
the absense of a rich patron, PostgreSQL is not going to have any
TPC numbers.)

I see frequently suggestions that benchmarks are useless because they
measure the wrong things, or that they are skewed for this or that
case.  That doesn't mean that good tests are impossible. I'm not a
real big fan of the TPC's policies, but they do have some
well-crafted test specifications.

A

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