On 5 Apr 2004 at 8:36, Josh Berkus wrote:
>
> Point taken, though, SQL Server has done a better job in opitimizing for
> "dumb" queries. This is something that PostgreSQL needs to work on, as is
> self-referential updates for large tables, which also tend to be really slow.
> Mind you, in SQL Server 7 I used to be able to crash the server with a big
> self-referential update, so this is a common database problem.
>
I agree about the "dumb" queries (I'm not mine are *that* dumb :) )
When you can write SQL that looks right, feels right, gives the right
answers during testing and SQLServer runs them really fast, you stop
there and tend not to tinker with the SQL further.
You *can* (I certainly do) achieve comparable performance with
PostgreSQL, but you just have to work harder for it. Now that I have
learned the characteristics of both servers I can write SQL that is pretty
good on both. I suspect that there are people who evaluate PostgreSQL
by executing their favorite SQLSever queries against it, see that it is
slower and never bother to go further.
Cheers,
Gary.