During my PGCon 2009 presentation there was a question on the saw tooth nature of the workload results on the high end side of benchmark runs. To which Matthew Wilcox (from Intel) commented it could be scheduler related. I did not give it much thought at that time till today when I was trying to do some iGen runs for the JDBC Binary Transfer patch (more on that in another blog post) and also Simon's read only scalability runs . Then I realized that I was not following one of my one tuning advice for running Postgres on OpenSolaris. The advice is to  use FX Class of scheduler instead of the default TS Class on OpenSolaris . More details on various scheduler classes can be found on docs.sun.com.

Now how many times I have forgotten to do …

Welcome to the 147th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Let’s start this week, with blogs from the SQL Server world, where a number of excellent technical posts appear. Alexander Kuznetsov surprises his readers with this assertion: without ORDER BY, there is no default sort order. “Sounds trivial? Right, but different flavors of this myth still persist.  . . .  Because apparently many visitors agreed with this myth, I decided to post a repro script which demonstrates that this is simply not true.”

In their post on …

Last month when I've published my results obtained with PostgreSQL 8.3.7 on db_STRESS benchmark I was surprised they were much lower comparing to MySQL, as well some signs alarmed me there is something goes wrong with PostgreSQL... So, once it was possible, I took my time and prepared another testing on the same M5000 server I published MySQL results last week.

I would say I discovered a lot of new things benchmarking PostgreSQL ! I'm not kidding :-) And without going too much in detail, the main gain seems to me of MySQL over PostgreSQL was a lower cost on executing a single query. The query in question was the second SELECT in db_STRESS.

SELECT-2 execution time:

• MySQL 5.4: 0.44ms
• PostgreSQL 8.4: 1.3ms
• PostgreSQL 8.4 prepared statement: 0.98ms

Again, if PostgreSQL being slower on a single query scaled much more far on say 24 cores - it'll be not really a problem. But …

Hello and welcome to the 146th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. I have to make this a quick one, but I hope (as always) that the links give you the highlights of this week’s blogs.

Oracle

Let’s start with Jonathan Lewis’s report from IOUG Day 4: ” Not so much a little gem today as a little surprise and a few consequential thoughts. In a presentation on optimising star transformations the presenter pointed out that bitmap indexes are only available in Oracle Enterprise Edition.”

Here’s Doug Burns with the first of a series on …

A year ago, the outline was being written. A lot of work was crammed into the intervening months, and I am happy and proud to announce that the MySQL Administrator’s Bible has been published, and is sitting on the shelf at many major booksellers already. The official publication date is today — Monday, May 11th, 2009 — although some stores have had copies for a week, including Amazon.com.

The MySQL Administrator’s Bible, published by Wiley Press (available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Administrators-Bible-Sheeri-Cabral/dp/0470416912/, fully covers how to administer MySQL 5.1. It is suitable for people new to MySQL, although as an experienced MySQL DBA I can say that I learned a lot while researching and writing this book, and I believe that even veteran DBAs can learn from this book.

This book for …

Welcome to the 145th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

MySQL

Since MySQL was surely the belle of the bloggers’ ball this week—why, everyone was talking—let’s begin with it.

Baron Schwartz started something with his post examining why MySQL might not benefit from having a mother ship. Dean Ellis of niflheim responded, arguing that everyone needs the MySQL mothership. And that got Sheeri’s Cabral’s attention—she took the middle path in her …

As I was driving with a colleague in California a couple of weeks ago during the conference, the topic of conversation turned to the notion that Percona and the rest of the MySQL community really need the presence of a central entity that provides a recognized home for the MySQL server. The conversation went something like “I was talking to so-and-so, and he said, you know, you guys really need Sun/MySQL, because without the mother ship, things will fall apart and your own business will fail.”

I happen to believe this is FUD, and that the reverse might actually be true. (This is one reason why we’re competing head-on with MySQL.) Having a “mother ship” is in the long run, a very complex scenario to fully understand. There are all sorts of causes and effects that play out in subtle ways. I honestly doubt anyone can really …

This edition of Log Buffer is my first article on the Pythian Blog. It seems appropriate that, as I start a new chapter of my life in Canada and am looking to the future, a lot of the blogs this week are doing the same.

After the shock of the Oracle takeover the MySQL community is full of hope. Mark Callaghan has written about the new storage engines for MySQL and also suggestions for what the MySQL community could be doing while they wait to hear what Oracle has planned.

Kaj Arno has looked to the future and he thinks he has found some answers.

With the …

Selena Deckelmann has posted some ideas about a “hacker’s cooperative” for PostgreSQL.

This is the 143rd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

So . . .  Anything happen while I was away?

Okay, so I heard the big news. And just in case you haven’t, here it is from Sheeri Cabral: Oracle Buys Sun. This is a sea-change in the hi-tech world, and the DB part of it will also get rocked, Sun being the home of MySQL. There’s lots of comment in Sheeri’s post, and indeed, all over the database blogging world. I will try here to cover the best of it.

Oracle + Sun + MySQL

First, Monty Says: …