Re: Benchmarks - Java vs PL/SQL

In article <3A3BB8DC.9E14E0E0_at_hotmail.com>,   rickhall2000_at_hotmail.com wrote:
> I did some looking into this because I was considering rewriting
> some PL/SQL sp's in Java. According to Oracle, for sp's that are
> processing intensive, Java can out perform PL/SQL 5 to 1.
> For sp's that are data intensive PL/SQL will out perform Java at
> 10:1.

While I hadn't seen this claim before, I have no difficulting believing it; it seems reasonable. However, since we're talking about database applications here, I would assert that in virtually any given situation, I/O from database operations is the bottleneck, and not CPU usage. On every system I've worked on over the past 10 years, we've been chasing I/O and memory with bearly a thought towards the CPUs. You go with Java, and the expected 5% gain in CPU efficiency is going to be completely irrelevant when your box is stuck in iowait. I'll take the 10% improvement data handling from PL/SQL any day.

You also have to consider the extra memory needed to support Java... memory that could otherwise be given to the SGA.

While Java might be better than PL/SQL at processor-intensive tasks, let's not forget that Java itself pretty much sucks in terms of processing efficiency due to its nature as an interpreted language and the overhead imposed by the runtime machine. You want fast code, write it in C. You want fast code AND fast database processing, write in Pro*C. Now that's the best of both worlds.

I'm very disappointed in Java (in case I haven't made that clear yet). Its original conception as a platform-independent object-oriented language sure looks good on paper, but I have yet to see it fly. I've wasted countless hours dealing with the peculiarities and incompatibilities of varies Java Runtime Environments and JDKs... and I've stopped paying attention to all the Java errors induced by web applications that try to run a downloaded applet. So much for platform independence.

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http://www.deja.com/ Received on Mon Dec 18 2000 - 10:29:20 CST