Re: NASA switches from Oracle to MySQL

"Business" <ihatespam_at_nomail.com> kirjoitteli seuraavaa:

>There are also some issues with Linux that make it a poor choice as a
>database platform. Linux lacks true raw I/O except through extensions such
>as from SGI and Red Hat (version 6EE). These kernel extensions bring Linux
>closer to the I/O performance of NT or Solaris, but not equal. With
>*identical* hardware, commercial databases actually run faster on Windows 2k
>than on Linux (usually by a factor of 2 or more for Oracle).

On the contrary, Linux-platform is 2.2 times faster than NT4.0, with Oracle 8.0.5.

>Open Source has its place. Databases is not one of those places yet.

It is.

> I use
>Linux daily as a testing and development platform.

And you still got it slower than _NT_? How on earth did you manage to do that, when NT's task switch takes 20 ms?

> We also use it as our
>production web server, mail and news platforms. However, we wouldn't dream
>of using it for a production database.

Our company is using. Has used more than two years now and there is no way I could force them to go back to NT-based server.

Linux-Oracle has now uptime average of two months, Oracle on NT4.0 couldn't survive past few weeks. Linux is also much faster, on the same machine NT used to be. Access times on NT are on average 2.2 times of Linux.

I've done extensive benchmarking so I should know what I'm talking about. Mainly Forms-application response times, but also raw SQL on client.

> I have benchmarked Oracle on NT
>compared to Oracle on Linux, and my Linux box was twice the machine of the
>NT box. Oracle on NT was faster.

Unless you have hard, repeatable data on that, I won't believe. NT is notoriously slow and that's a fact. Even if you have 256M memory.

Especially slow if you have more than one user.

What Oracle, what versions of NT/Linux, how much memory, which drives etc.?

There are significant speed differences between Oracle-versions.

>Our production database platform is Solaris, which has proven to one of the
>best choices as a database platform.

Solaris is good, I'm not saying that. It's also more stable than Linux. On the other hand, Solaris usually runs on proper hardware, not PC.

Any PC is piece of crap if studied hard enough. It shouldn't be surprise to anyone, it's designed as a toy.

>I am not slamming Open Source.

Yes, you are. You _say_ it's not good, but don't give a single reason why it's not.

You say that Linux is slow and as I don't know how did you do your benchmarks, I can't say you lie, but I can say that you have very peculiar results.

You tested with just one user or something like that?

> I am only making the point that Open Source
>is *not* a panacea for all our computing woes.

Not _all_.

No-one in his right mind would suggest _any system_ for that. Linux is fast and stable, so Linux is very good platform for small Oracle-databases.

I'd recommend it any day, assuming
company has someone who understands Unix.

Tuomas

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