MySQL Beats Commercial Databases in Labs Test 419
An anonymous reader writes "Many of the big players now offer free or 'light' versions of their databases, some would call them crippleware. Builder AU compared databases from Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and MySQL, and the open source offering came out on top."
Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not in Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe not in Australia (Score:5, Informative)
That's how it should be everywhere.
Australia now has DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)
IIRC, EULAs are considered void in Australia because it's a contract occuring after the monetary transaction. After you paid, there is no way additional conditions can be added.
When you buy downloadable software, you are given the chance to review the EULA before you enter your payment information. Should this ruling against EULAs stand up in court, I can see Amazon or foreign counterparts doing the same for boxed software under heavy pressure from major BSA publishers.
"But what about retail sales in person?" The United States has enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and has imposed identical conditions on Australia through a recent un-Free Trade Agreement. Under the DMCA, decrypting a copyrighted work is an exclusive right of the copyright owner. This means that a retail software transaction can now be decomposed into two separate offer-acceptance-consideration sequences: The first is a regular sale, where money is traded for a box containing a disc. The second is a license or licence to decrypt the installer, where your rights are traded for decryption during the install process. The disc is useful only as a toy until you enter into this second contract.
Even if this DMCA-based theory doesn't hold water, nothing stops a publisher from requiring all authorized retailers to make a working Internet terminal available to customers and putting a conspicuous notice on the packaging: "This sale is subject to your acceptance of terms and conditions displayed at http://eula.microsoft.com/windows/xp". In fact, this method has been upheld in a U.S. Court of Appeals [corante.com].
Uhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Those contracts (which usually go through some dunderhead in legal) are quite specific in what you can and can't do. For example: They may specify the number of seats, if and in what form the db may be connected to the internet, or even the business in which the product may be used for.
Those are very much legal contracts and have (even though you may call it an EULA) not a helluvalot to do with shrink-wrap or click-through EULAs.
Re:Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:3, Informative)
i guess mysql would have beaten the rest in simple queries and perhaps would have gotten it's ass kicked when it goes down to many subselects that depend on indexes to join up, mysql had some bug or not yet include optimization lack there some time ago, dunno where it is now.
but i was very surprised how "deep" the comparision between features was
stored procedures: mysql has them all right, but the pointers are not yet fully implemented in 5.0 they miss some featu
Re:Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:3)
Why would you compare sql server express (free) to oracle standard ($20,000/year) and DB2 Express ($8000/year)? What the heck kind of comparison is that? They could get evaluation copies of oracle and db2 but not of sql server enterprise edition? Puh-leez.
And then they take pains to point out that MySql 5 which they didn't even test supports triggers, stored procs, and functions. What? If you didn't test it, don't write it up in your review called Road
Re:Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:5, Informative)
And I'm an avowed MySQL hater. I think it's a shitty hack of a database and there is no problem domain where there isn't at least one other product is a better solution. But this "no support" line is almost as wrong as it is stupid.
By the way, the kind of support you're claiming you need (24/7 on call support with access to someone who can provide a patch for a new problem) will be enormously expensive, where it's even available - there's no support plan Microsoft provides that makes those sort of promises, for example. You might get a patch in a half hour if it's a known problem and they have one ready for it, but you'll probably spend more than that half hour just convincing the rep that you have that specific problem. IBM or some of the other more service oriented companies may provide that kind of support. It's going to be expensive though - expensive enough that if you're worried about how much it's going to cost, it's probaby more than your company is worth.
Re:Isn't this an EULA violation? (Score:5, Insightful)
"free" for development or personal use, and then compare them against only ONE OSS database. Would you like to guess which OSS database that is?
The entire story feels trumped up to appeal to MySQL fans.
Crippled Versions (Score:5, Informative)
SHOOT!! you want to see MySQL get its bum kicked on performance? Run a test on a filesystem against MySQL.
Comparing performance among databases is only meaningful if all of the candidates have the features of which you need. MySQL has come a long way, and I use it in production every day, but this is kind of a silly comparison. The free versions of the big DB's are meant to provide an easy migration path to more feature-complete versions; if you use Sequel Server Express and want to upgrade to something that that supports clustering and log shipping, you may your money and get your features. With MySQL, if you outgrow it, you either need to start writing code, migrating to something else, or sitting on your hands waiting for it to get there.
Recap, for those who won't RTFC and want to slag me: I like MySQL. I use it for mission critical purposes in production environments. However, comparing a simpler product's performance to (crippled versions of) more robust products is silly.
Cheers
-AC
Re:Crippled Versions (Score:4, Insightful)
Ohhmmm... They didn't compare performance at all.
Just did a basic install and initial setup then ran with the feature list and compared price/alowed configs.
The article basicaly confirms what I recomend (and you probebly do) anyway. I.e. If the Free product can do the job "corectly" (Catch all term for performance, reliability features etc...) there is no need for the $$$ databases.
If however you need to do something that only a comercial database will alow you have to get that database.
Most of my customers NEVER chose the databases they use. They chose a specific application then got that app vendor to spell out what database, OS and Hardware they recomend for this workload.
I like MySQL, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, I don't really care what the answer to that is -- either way, I win. Either commercial DB vendors really are releasing heavily crippled versions (bad for them), or MySQL really is the best DB out there (good for it).
And what about postgres?
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
In what way is that bad for them? Let's face facts, by the time you're using a DB that requires some serious power it probably means you're making money with it. That's the idea behind writing enterprise level software: to make cash. These lesser "crippled" version are goodwill as I see it, and mostly for students or armature enthusiasts.
By the time you're making money from technology the user should be willing to ante up a few shekels to keep the game going instead of being cheap and running down the market.
It makes them look bad (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, from what I read of the article it doesn't look like they used the free version of Oracle. It listed a unlimited cpu lic. fee of $19K.
I was impressed with some of the features of MySQL. Since I looked at it years ago it looks like it has come a long way. However I now work at a big company with a site lic. for Oracle, its unlikely I'll
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2)
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2)
Yeah, products. notice the word that you used there.
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's exactly like comparing crippleware with freeware.
Whose problem is it if the freeware is the better product?
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest I think feature wise MS SQL Server beats the shit out of MySQL. And that the "old" 2000 version, not the new 2005 which had quite a few improvements.
The only limitation in these "express editions" is how large the DB can be, how much ram it will utilize and how many CPUs it will run on. 4GB dbs, 2 GB ram and 1 CPU iirc. Feature and performance-wise on that same (limited) hardware it will perform as good as the commercial version.
As for large databases I woulnd't trust MySQL at all. It's
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/case-studies/ [mysql.com]
then there's this story
http://xooglers.blogspot.com/2005/12/lets-get-real -database.html [blogspot.com]
hoping that "you get what you pay for" will get a swarm of professional bloodsuckers that will make sure to sell you the most expensive plan, even you could get the same quality for much less.
and, adiitionally, i don't hear much "you can trust big systems to ms products" nowadays
usually stories are quite opposite.
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Except the license might make MySQL cost $$$..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Except the license might make MySQL cost $$$... (Score:3, Informative)
To be more precise, it is more lenient than the GPL alone: if you distribute your software with the MySQL client libraries, you can use any OSI-approved license, even if it is not GPL-compatible.
You must include your source code. If MySQL was released under the LGPL (which it isn
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2)
Plus anyone that says that mysql is better than oracle, db2 and sql server is smoking something....
Re:I like MySQL, but...sigh (Score:5, Funny)
The poster meant differently abled versions.
Happy random day in December!
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:2)
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
PostgreSQL has its own problems. I have a simple table, with a couple bigint columns. Consider these two statements:
1. select * from tbl where id = 123;
2. select * from tbl where id = '123';
The second is nearly three orders of magnitude faster.
People have complained about this annoying gotcha for years.
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bill
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
*cough* What transaction isolation level? MySQL hasn't had transactions for YEARS. Once it finally got them, it turned out they were being faked anyway. A real database works correctly BECAUSE it has proper transaction isolation.
Re:I like MySQL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bill
Obligatory.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about PostgreSQL? It should fare very well.
Re:Obligatory.... (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. In fact, tests in the past showed postgres was a better choice over mysql. But don't take my word, compare it yourself with those in the article...
http://www.postgresql.org/ [postgresql.org]
Laughable! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Obligatory.... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Microsoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft? (Score:2)
As for SQL Server Standard, they are showing "junior" databases, designed for small businesses. They have the little version of DB2, the l
Re:Microsoft? (Score:2)
Did you see the prices on the other commercial products? If our small company is choosing their database by price, then the SQL Server Standard Edition is priced fairly with the other commercial offerings.
Standard Edition is not the Enterprise Edition..so it is one of their 'junior' products.
Yes, MySQL would have them all beat on price. But putting a free beta product vs. other commerical products is a load of crap.
Two things... (Score:3, Insightful)
Second - Sweet Hog of Prague! Oracle 10g costs $24 grand Per CPU!?!?!?!?
NeverEndingBillboard.com [neverendingbillboard.com]
Re:Two things... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Two things... (Score:3, Funny)
Developers, developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS.
It's not just for Microsoft anymore.
Re:Two things... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Two things... (Score:4, Insightful)
oh, it can be *far* more expensive than that. The enterprise version is $40k/CPU, and that doesn't even including partitioning. To get Partitioning (and yes, you want it for any large database) you're looking at an extra $10k/CPU. And there are other extra charges as well. You can easily end up at $60k/CPU.
On the flip side, you can also get away with $5k/CPU if you know what you're doing, and if what you're doing is small. On the large side where you'd pay $60k/CPU you've probably also got $600k in hardware and a staff of at least a half-dozen. Guess what? The software & hardware almost always end up as a rounding-error compared to the labor costs. Doesn't really matter if the application is custom or commercial, they both seem to have about the same labor costs.
Re:Two things... (Score:2)
Now you know how, with a company that sells basically one product and its support, Larry Ellison gets his fortune within spitting distance of B. Gates's; whose company sells a bewildering slew of products found preinstalled (and prepaid) on virtually all new PCs.
So, how much did MySQL AB pay for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
And of course, absolutely no mention of stability, reliability, bugs, robustness, etc... what a suprise, considering that both MSSQL and MySQL are arguably far behind in those areas.
Where are the test cases? Where is the testing methodology? How about some explanation of particular cases where one solution didn't compare with the others, or where one solution excelled? This 'labs test' reads more like a sales pitch than anything resembling an actual test.
Re:So, how much did MySQL AB pay for this? (Score:2)
Re:So, how much did MySQL AB pay for this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't usually get involved in these discussions, because it's just armchair politics. But look -- I'm an employee for a highly successful company [zappos.com] built on top of MySQL, and it works great. Hundreds of tables, many with hundreds of millions of rows. Our primary DB averages over 1200 queries per second (yes, that's an average
Crappy business model... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our scenario in this comparison calls for a database solution for a relatively small e-commerce company with less than 200 employees. The company sells DVDs and books over the Internet and will initially have around 1000 customers"
Lemme see...five customers for each employee? With an American workforce pulling down $40K each with benefits, that means each customer needs to buy $8K of useless crap from this one company every year.
Re:Crappy business model... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Crappy business model... (Score:2)
Maybe they're Chinese sex slaves. (Score:2)
SQL Server Express Is Mostly for Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of having to have access to a full fledged SQL Server, you use SQL Server Express to develop your application and then deploy it to a full SQL Server when that server becomes available.
Since SQL Server Express supports the vast majority of the features [microsoft.com] that a developer might need, it is very useful during the initial development of an application.
In my experience, SQL Server Express is great for basic projects (like a personal web site or blog) and for the initial phases of development of a "real" project. Once you start getting into the realm of serious applications, where one might need finer grained control of isolation and locking, or when you are at the point where you need to do performance testing of your application, you really do need to move up to the full SQL Server box.
At any rate, I'm not really sure this comparison is all that fair. MySQL makes an attempt to be a database server for "real" applications, where as SQL Server Express is more of a development tool / MS Access replacement that is targeted at personal projects.
Re:SQL Server Express Is Mostly for Developers (Score:2)
Re:SQL Server Express Is Mostly for Developers (Score:2)
For most sites, your hardware probably costs less than the license. Hardly a good plan. I've used MS SQL Server, and it's good, but I have no idea why would anybody even WANT to run a blog
Re:SQL Server Express Is Mostly for Developers (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why you use it for personal sites, not for "real" applications, just as I said. The people who would use SQL Express are the same people who used Access databases for their sites... but this is far better than Access in almost every way.
By the time you find Express won't cut it anymore, it'd probably take quite a while to migrate from it.
Well, perhaps from a financial point of vi
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Most important comparison... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, it's free, performs good, etc. (Score:2)
OMG (Score:5, Informative)
It's things like that where you just ultimately conclude that the writer(s) of this article just does not know what the hell he's talking about and doesn't have a basic understanding of the concepts or products under review. It's just more OSS nonsensical propaganda in my opinion. And don't fool yourselves into thinking that an article like this is going to change any IT manager's mind about what DBMS he's going to deploy in his enterprise.
I love MySQL but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sick and Tired (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, even ignoring the fact that these are crippled versions of the real deal, this isn't even a proper test! Let's see what a REAL DB comparison looks like:
Complete TPC-H Results List [tpc.org]
I know that MySQL and PostgreSQL aren't included in that result list but that is how a test SHOULD be performed, not with the ridiculously hand-wavy methods the authors use to 'score' each DB software.
That being said, no one has any business saying MySQL >> DB2 or Oracle. That's a joke. MySQL would SUFFER in the 10TB test. Also, where is Teradata? Furthermore, the way that the article treats SQL Server is even more ridiculous, because their 'free' version is likely the least functional of the lot since it is SPECIFICALLY aimed at learning on one's own desktop. Nothing to see here, just a random useless article trying to say something to push its writers' ideas without much basis.
like having my grandma rate sports cars (Score:5, Insightful)
PRODUCT SELECTION
1. where's postgresql? This is the product that the commercial vendors need to be the most nervous about. Sure, they're loosing more low-end revenue to mysql right now, but postgresql is getting picked up by some big players. It is far more mature than MySQL, doesn't have the quality issues, isn't partially owned by Oracle, etc.
2. where's at least a mention of all the various other solutions - from Firebird to Derby (Cloudscape)
FUTURE PROOFING
1. They mistakenly say that mysql doesn't require scaling up to enterprise versions like db2/oracle do. This is incorrect because mysql lags behind oracle & db2 for performance in many situations:
- since it doesn't support query parallelism (which provides near linear performance improves to db2/oracle)
- since it doesn't support partitioning (which can provide 10x performance improvements to db2/oracle)
- since it doesn't have a mature optimizers (which means that queries with 5 table joins can tank)
- since it lacks memory tuning flexibility
Together this means that as your data increases you have to continue moving a mysql database to larger & larger hardware.
In other words, if you need to scan a table with 10 million rows in it, then join that data against 6 other tables - db2/oracle can:
- leverage partitioning so only scan 1mil rows or so instead of 10mil
- split the scan across four cpus
- leverage more efficiently tuned memory (ensuring little tables & indexes stay in memory)
- use the best possible join
and probably complete the query in 1/60th the time that mysql would take. And that means that you could get better performance from db2/oracle on a $25,000 four-way smp than from mysql on a $2,000,000 32-way.
2. They fail to mention that Oracle now owns the most valuable parts of the MySQL solution (Innodb). Oracle has obviously purchased this component (which is how mysql supports transactions, pk/fk constraints, etc) in order to harm MySQL. Since there is no other viable replacement for Innodb the MySQL future is in serious doubt.
3. They probably weren't aware that MySQL is the least ANSI-SQL compliant database in the market. This is means that porting mysql code to another database is a royal pain in the butt compared to code supporting postgresql, db2, etc. Though, to be fair, it is getting much better.
LICENSING COSTS:
1. mysql isn't necessarily free, and can cost more than the commercial alternatives for small distributed commercial apps
2. db2 licensing only provided for DB2 Express- which is the low-cost 2-cpu model. That's often ok, hardly compares to Oracle standard edition also included. Also, I think they may have gotten their db2 costs mixed up between express & workgroup editions.
CONCLUSIONS & MISC
They mentioned some of the great mysql features like clustering and fault tolerance. Sorry, but mysql cluster solution is a separate telecom product that they purchased, that stores your data in memory - limiting your database size to however much memory you can afford. Not a practical solution for very many.
The mysql fault tolerance is really just replication. That's sad.
They mention one strength of mysql is their maximum database size of 64TB - which is nonsense, just because its internal registers and pointers can handle a theoretical maximum of 64TB doesn't mean that it would ever make sense to put more than 20 GB on it. DB2 & Oracle can go to 64TB, but today almost nobody is going beyond 10 TB just due to backup performance, cp
Re:like having my grandma rate sports cars (Score:3, Insightful)
I think your point 3 under future proofing (ANSI compliance) points out how slanted the review was.
On the spec page for MS SQL Server Express they said it had "Basic" ANSI support. Sounds kind of crappy, huh?
For MySQL, which doesn't even have basic support they wrote, "Extended subset of SQL-99, plus SQL-99 and SQL:2003 features." Sounds a lot better, doesn't it? It's not. It's a mis-mash or standard and non-standard bits versus Microsoft's basic support of the standard.
It's a sad state of affairs
Re:like having my grandma rate sports cars (Score:3, Informative)
The partitioning implementation in MySQL 5.1 is still very new (pre-alpha quality) and is not production-ready at this time. Much the same is true of this chapter: Some of the features described herein are not yet actually implemented (partitioning maintenance and repartitioning commands), and others might not yet function exactly as described (for example, the DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY options for partitions are adversely affect
Re:like having my grandma rate sports cars (Score:3, Informative)
> compliant mode and the standard seem like slim pickings for a critic.
Yeah, they're covering their butts in the documentation much better than the old days in which they blatantly stated that transactions and pk/fk constraints were bad. Now, it's much harder to find the things that they are embarressed about - like their old licensing faq, or compatibility issues. The url you provided only shows those c
its not my sqls job to gaurentee data integrity (Score:4, Insightful)
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/constraint
" Before MySQL 5.0.2, MySQL is forgiving of illegal or improper data values and coerces them to legal values for data entry. In MySQL 5.0.2 and up, that remains the default behavior, but you can select more traditional treatment of bad values such that the server rejects them and aborts the statement in which they occur. This section describes the default (forgiving) behavior of MySQL, as well as the newer strict SQL mode and how it differs."
" MySQL allows you to store certain incorrect date values into DATE and DATETIME columns (such as '2000-02-31' or '2000-02-00'). The idea is that it's not the job of the SQL server to validate dates. If MySQL can store a date value and retrieve exactly the same value, MySQL stores it as given. If the date is totally wrong (outside the server's ability to store it), the special date value '0000-00-00' is stored in the column instead."
This is still a hobbiest toy.
Re:its not my sqls job to gaurentee data integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:its not my sqls job to gaurentee data integrity (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there's MySQL in production environments. If the task at hand is the configuration data for your cacti SNMP graphers, MySQL is perfectly fine. But for real, transactable data? If you're young, keen and besotted by OSS, Postgres might help you not get sacked. Not MySQL. Outside the OSS space, you'll find a lot of people who say ``why do we spend all that money on Oracle, I can knock it up in Access''. It's the same problem: a lack of understanding of what really defines an enterprise DBMS.
ian
A whole new way of reviewing software!!! (Score:2)
Nice writeup, but horrible ratings.. (Score:2)
MySQL can actually cost more then all of the others since they charge per instance for support. Oracle is support for your environment but license for production. (so you get service levels for test/dev/uat/p
Its good enough for Google! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its good enough for Google! (Score:3, Interesting)
Trying to port a ridiculous application like this to 'real' database (I'm assuming Oracle) is going to be painful at the best - MySQL is not standards compliant in any wa
The writer doesn't know his head from his ass (Score:5, Informative)
This is utterly false.
MSDE is based off SQL Server 2000, which itself a revision to SQL Server 7. MS Access has NOTHING to do with SQL Server (excpet proving nice single DB front ends via ADPs). When your dishonest (or just stupid) so early in a article, you loose your reader.
Lab test? (Score:5, Informative)
A "Review" based on check-off charts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me a break. This guy has reviewed databases on the basis of features, with, as far as I can tell, not a single real performance evaluation in different kinds of applications (OLTP, DSS, data warehouse), data volumes, or query complexity.
It gets better. In discussing Oracle, he explains: That is not to say the other databases serve up incorrect data but with some database engines when the workload is high, uncommitted data can be flushed from buffers to disk potentially creating a dirty read. MVRC also ensures that readers do not block writers and visa versa. HUH? I can't speak for EVERY database out there, but for most of them, you'd have to specifically set a "read uncommitted" isolation level to actually read dirty data. The majority of the databases would simply give a lock-and-block situation while the second reader waits for the writer to complete. Oracle's MVRC (and PostgreSQL's scheme) both prevent this lock-block situation. But, really, to say that this would potentially create a dirty read situation is just silly.
He also didn't speak of Oracle's new Express Edition. Yeah, it's limited to 1 CPU and has a cap on its data volume, but you get all of Oracle's core features (including PL/SQL) for FREE.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along.
Good freakin god (Score:5, Insightful)
And Postgresql is far more robust and performs just as well.
What does mysql offer any more that the other OSS databases don't? Is it just that it's the M in LAMP? I'm so tired of hearing about Mysql, and all the Mysql drama, when it's just a shitty database that has a lot of mindshare.
Re:Good freakin god (Score:5, Interesting)
And SQLite is better? Because it's ACID? HA! HA HA HA HA HA! GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK! That's the only buzzword it IS compliant with. Look at this:
Q: SQLite lets me insert a string into a database column of type integer!
A: This is a feature, not a bug. SQLite does not enforce data type constraints. [emphasis added]
and this:
Q: What is the maximum size of a VARCHAR in SQLite?
A: SQLite does not enforce the length of a VARCHAR. You can declare a VARCHAR(10) and SQLite will be happy to let you put 500 characters in it. And it will keep all 500 characters intact - it never truncates.
and this:
Q: Does SQLite support a BLOB type?
A: SQLite versions 3.0 and leter let you puts BLOB data into any column, even columns that are declared to hold some other type.
all this and more can be seen at http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html [sqlite.org]
"And Postgresql is far more robust and performs just as well."
And only recently ran natively under Windows. Sorry, but when you're in a company with 33k employees and a substantial IT department, you don't always get to pick your platform. MySQL was there, it worked, and it continues to do so. Why would I switch?
Let me make the required car analogy: a semi is several orders of magnitude more powerful than a 2WD pickup truck. A semi can haul more, and haul more further, and haul big loads more efficiently, and with a sleeper cab and two drivers can operate 24/7, and you can get refrigerated units to move food, etc etc etc. Why, then, are there millions of 2WD pickups sold? Are they just "shitty vehicles with lots of mindshare"? NO! It's because 99.9% of the population just wants to move a couch or go to Home Depot or something. Maybe it'll take a few trips to help a friend move, but even that takes fewer hours than getting a class-whatever license, plus pickups are easier to maneuver and park in apartment complex parking lots and residential neighborhoods, etc etc etc.
I'm not saying MySQL is better than everythinhg else. The fact is, databases and computers are SO capable now that even the WORST in the field is STILL more than 99% of people need. In other words, MySQL is Just Fine.
PS: MySQL is ACID when used with InnoDB tables which came out about 3 years ago. [google.com] Time to update your troll.
Horses for Courses (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to distribute MySQL with your application to a customer, you have to pay a license fee. That means that for many people, MS SQL Express may be better.
If I wanted to do some complex database logic, I'd probably consider MS SQL Express, as stored procedures on MySQL haven't been out there for long.
If you are building a database to go on low-cost LAMP hosting, MySQL does the job well.
For a piece of shareware requiring a small database, something like SQLLite is probably better than these options.
Rigged test (Score:4, Insightful)
While everyone seems to agree (Score:5, Informative)
Have you checked the licenses on Oracle for instance. If I remember correctly, the commercial license prevents publications of benchmarks without approval from Oracle.
Having said that, if *I* were supreme overload of database comparisons, here's what I would do:
- Decide on a reference hardware platform in both 32 and 64 bit. I would also include a non-x86_64 hardware platform such as pSeries. Of course this will limit the SQL Server tests but that's Microsoft's own choice.
- Also decide on a common disk layout for the databases. Many commercial databases and even PostgreSQL will perform poorly out of the box on a flat disk layout. Seperate index, data and logs on unique volumes. If you decide to go RAID5 for any LUN, stick at least 6 disks under that LUN. RAID1 for log files. You also need to decide on which filesystem you want to use. This all of course determines which OS you use. I'm assuming Linux in this scenario. Most PostgreSQL recommendations I've seen recommend XFS on RAID10 but RHEL and SUSE don't include XFS support without going unsupported with the vendor in a kernel recompile.
- Bring in a skilled DBA for each product. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone who wants to get published in his respective product.
- Provide no OS tuning except the defaults recommended by the manufacturer of the database. OS tuning varies from vendor to vendor. Some suggest SHMMAX to be one setting while others suggest another number. You can't compare apples to apples when you've tuned I/O at 64k blocks for DB2 and 128K for Oracle (not that you would for either).
- Test all workloads. You may notice that some vendors provide a different product configuration for DSS, OLTP and OLAP. Some vendors even provide a different version of the product for a specific workload.
- Use the same DDL where possible. Really think about this for a moment. Alot of tests I've seen determine raw select, raw insert and raw update speeds but don't take into account the complex DDL that most business have. Take our layout for instance:
1) We have an OLTP system.
2) It also has a schema for OLAP that is populated by triggers from the OLTP tables.
3) We load our warehouse off of the denormalized tables and also provide the OLAP functions within our application from those tables. (Our warehouse is updated each morning but we have a requirement in the application for realtime data for the current business day)
Now with those above requirements, INSERT and UPDATE are going to perform much slower than what a raw benchmark would tell me and IMHO is much more indicative of real world design.
- Note which "levers" you have available to pull. With DB2, I can put specific tables on different LUNs via tablespaces. I can also assign tables and indexes to different bufferpools. Quite honestly, I can't do any of that with MySQL (well with InnoDB I can via some symlink madness). I can accomplish the tablespaces option with PostgreSQL but not the unique bufferpools for certain tablespaces or indexspaces.
- Also note what maintenance is required to actually keep the database performing. REORGs in DB2. VACs in PGSQL. I can update and insert 10mil rows to DB2/MYSQL/PGSQL but what happens when I need to go back and select out those rows? This leads to the next test:
- Test the optimizer! This is probably the biggest thing for me. How does the optimizer determine which access path to take? What factors influence that? I would not intentionally write shitty SQL but developers aren't DBAs. They don't normally concern themselves with the BEST path or even the quickest path to the data as long as they get the data they need. Don't talk to me about OR functions or LEFT OUTER JOINs that I've seen spit out by ORM products or worse yet SELECT * and doing the logic in the application. Run EXPLAIN plans on all queries you're testing. In the end, the optimizer is the biggest factor in the database per
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:5, Informative)
If there's nothing going on in the database, then the 'summary' value that MySQL keeps is probably spot on accurate. But, if there's lots of simultaneous inserts and deletes, then it's really going to be very approximate. Until things are all flushed, the summary may include all the inserts and none of the deletes, or vice versa. If you wanted to make the summary information accurate, then you'd have to establish locks and the like around that summary value, and THAT will slow the database down. As it stands, inserts and deletes can be executed with ZERO regard to each other.
Postgresql has a similar problem, except instead of offering a summary value and informed that it's an estimate, whenever you do a count(*) it actually scans the entire table file looking for 'valid' rows. Ie, count(*) is not instantaneous. I think they were going to address this issue in a later release (or perhaps it's in 8.1 already), but it's NOT a simple thing. However, if you wanted instant answers in Postgresql NOW, you can do it by setting up a trigger on insert and delete, and maintaining your own summaries. This is a performance hit, of course... but you'd get the same, or a similar hit, if the database was maintaining for you.
What the 'big guys' do, I don't know. But... don't knock MySQL for doing something weird
Postgresql, for comparison, will give you an 'accurate' value, but it actually has to create rows: it can't rely on summary information.
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:2)
Until things are all flushed, the summary may include all the inserts and none of the deletes, or vice versa. If you wanted to make the summary information accurate, then you'd have to establish locks and the like around that summary value, and THAT will slow the database down. As it stands, inserts and deletes can be executed with ZERO regard to each other.
And that's exactly what you'd do if you needed to depend on the result. All the subsequent inserts and deletes are irrelevant, as they lie outside th
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:2)
Just because something is "hard" doesn't mean that its acceptable to not do.
It would be more acceptable to leave out COUNT(*) functionality than to do it wrong. (Yes, if it gives an number other than the number of rows committed to a table it is wrong. "Weird" is what you call LISP.)
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair to MySQL, that's only for tables of type InnoDB. MyISAM and other storage engines do return an accurate count. From here [mysql.com]:
It should be noted, though, that you have to use InnoDB tables for all those "modern" database features like transactional support* and foreign key constraints.
It may be a bit of a bother, but it's not that hard to create the "counter table" for whatever it is you need to count. All the major DBs have something that's a pain in the ass...at least with MySQL you didn't have to pay for the pain.
*BDB and NDB Cluster are apparently transaction safe as well, but I have no experience with them; and for whatever reason, they don't seem to be popularly used.
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:3, Insightful)
count(*) against a table that is under heavy load and you get:
1) the count when you issued the command, via a lock (table) and scan
2) a secondary table/counter that gets updated automagicaly with each insert/delete commit
mysql chooses number 2. why? Well by the time you can do anything with the results, the lock will be gone. The table will no longer be in the state it was when you asked. Good for you, you just wasted DB cycle
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, everyone who ever uses a database should know this already. Thats the whole purpose of transactions and consistancy.
>Good for you, you just wasted DB cycles because you want 'accurate' data.
vs. using DB cycles for inaccurate data?
"Yes the result is wrong but look how many cycles we saved!"
Cray (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:3)
Instead of spending that $10M for that last 9, spend $50K on a customer service rep with the power to overide the system!
Ah come on. (Score:2)
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty fast(I never benched it, but its never been an issue), very portable, works in all major languages,
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Correctness isn't negotiable (Score:2, Informative)
It states that SHOW TABLE STATUS differs from SELECT COUNT(*) because SHOW TABLE STATUS guesses.
SHOW TABLE STATUS is just a misc admin command.
Re:what about power? (Score:2)
If the interface is too complex, or utter crap, then it doesn't matter how configurable or useful the program is.
I mean, come on,
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MySQL vs. Oracle install and use (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and there is an economy built around getting you to the point where you can understand what's going on.
Re:And where is Postgres? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me or was the author poignant and very descriptive when it came to the features set of MySQL while the features of other databases got a simple bleep in comparison?
I'm a big fan of MySQL but as a person who strives to be objective I find this comparison offensive and detrimental to the credibility of MySQL