Great Bridge re-runs benchmark with MySQL "tuned"

Folks,

We posted the following announcement on our website today, at
http://www.greatbridge.com/news/press.html.

Please feel free to email me off-list with any questions.

Thanks,
Ned



UPDATE, August 22, 2000:

MySQL performance improves with tuning suggestions from development
team;
PostgreSQL still leads all contenders under heavy usage

Following our recent release of AS3AP and TPC-C benchmark test
results, Great Bridge offered to re-run the tests with tuning and
custom configuration settings suggested by the MySQL development
team. We did, and we want to share the results.

It's important to note that the MySQL configuration originally
tested was the default MySQL installation, using the standard
MyODBC.dll Windows driver installed by MySQL (for the benchmark
software client machine, which ran Windows NT). Probably the most
significant change came from substituting a faster driver, called
MyODBC2.dll; according to the MySQL development team, the default
driver is used for debugging purposes, and is known to be slower in
production environments.

At their suggestion, we also implemented the following tuning
settings:

* key_buffer=64m
* table_cache=256
* sort_buffer=1m
* record_buffer=1m

So what were the results? MySQL did significantly better across the
board, averaging 69% more transactions per second in this tuned
environment, and exceeding Postgres' raw performance until the
seventh concurrent user. Its performance peaked at 1,321 tps (at 3
users), but still started to fall off about the same point as in the
previous test (4 users). See graphic
(http://www.greatbridge.com/img/as3ap_new.gif).

What does this mean? Our interpretation is that, properly
configured, MySQL is indeed a faster performer in raw read-only
databases with 6 or fewer users. We should note that these tests
results do not represent the full suite of AS3AP tests - only the
multiuser ir_select (information retrieval) test. Other tests in the
AS3AP suite require views, which MySQL does not currently support.
We should also note that the TPC-C test, which simulates a more
robust OLTP environment, still would not run under the tuned MySQL
configuration, primarily due to SQL compliance issues (see Richard
Brosnahan's analysis elsewhere in the main story). But overall,
MySQL acquitted itself well when expertly tuned for the AS3AP
ir_select test.