database contest in c't (German IT magazine)

Hi,

in the current edition of the german computer magazine c't the results
of the database contest, which they announced last year, has finally
been published. It was based on a very simple DVD-Store web application
from Dell. [1]

Back then I spent some time modifying the original php5 application to
use PostgreSQL. I've written some stored procedures in C and optimized
the schema at obvious places. I've been short on time, though, and
couldn't do everything I wished to do. Most importantly connection
pooling didn't seem to make it into the final entry I have submitted. :-(

That might be one reason for the disappointing performance result: last
place, just before the disqualified entries.  The performance trophy
(once again) has gone to the MySQL Benchmark Team... [2]

With that result I fear I did a disservice to PostgreSQL. Once again it
seems to be just slower than MySQL. I'm sorry for that. Especially
because other strengths of PostgreSQL didn't get mentioned.

OTOH I at least hacked up something. My entry was the only counting one
using PostgreSQL - which is surprising and disappointing me. (The only
other PosgreSQL entry from Alvar C.H. Freude unfortunately got
disqualified because it was sent in too late [3]). Didn't the PostgreSQL
community know about that contest? IMHO it would have been  worthwhile
to start a community project and submit an entry. Just to get rid of
that 'too-slow'-image PostgreSQL still has.

At least I have learned: next time I'll try to start a community project
for such a contest!

Regards

Markus



[1]: Read more about it on http://www.ctmagazin.de/dbcontest (german,
there are english translations of the contest rules... somewhere...)

[2]: My solution (PHP5/PostgreSQL 8.1) got 120 opm (operations per
minute? Dunno anymore what that meant exactly), the best PHP5/MySQL
solution got 3664 opm. Another interesting one (IMO) was MonetDB with
1833 opm. The Java/DB2 Express one got 1537 opm, Java/Oracle 10g Express
1412 opm...

[3]: I'm quite sure Alvar's entry would have performed much better than
mine. AFAICT he has written a quite well optimized apache/mod_perl/pgsql
solution.