Re: Which SQL is the best for servers?

#1

pg, 16.02.2009 07:09:

Quote:

I am involved with a SQL server project. The server would be used in a
very heavy duty environment, with hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of database enquiries per minutes.

The server would run Linux or one of the BSD variant, with at least
32GB of RAM. We are not very certain of the hardware specs yet because
we haven't decided on which SQL to use.

I know that Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL are all designed for heavy
duty uses.

And I checked all available online resources for a SQL comparison and
all I could find is some articles dated 2005 or so !

So, here's my questions:

1. Are there any recent SQL comparison article available?

2. Since the server may come with only 32GB of RAM, which SQL can run
the "leanest" - that is, not a memory hog?

3. The server might also become a web-server, which SQL can tie itself
to the Web-based enquiry they best?

Please give me your suggestion / opinion. Thank you !!

In the OpenSource area PostgreSQL would be my first choice. It simply has a lot more features in terms of data integrity than MySQL. The only drawback is, that replication with Postgres is not as easy as with MySQL, although you have more options to choose from.

For a benchmark of Postgres vs. MySQL when it comes to highly concurrent systems, check out this interesting article:

<http://tweakers.net/reviews/649/1/database-test-sun-ultrasparc-t1-vs-punt-amd-opteron-pagina-1.html>

If you have a "read-only" system that does not do a lot of writes, then MySQL might still be an option, but as soon as reads and writes are somewhat similar distributed MySQL does not scale very well (at least not if you are using transactions).

Additionally it seems that MySQL is more optimized against simple queries. They admit thmeselves[1] that their optimizer for sub-queries is not very good. So if you already know that you will have loads of complicated queries then I personally would shy away from MySQL.

Oracle probably offers the best scalability in terms of growth but with a heavy price-tag.

In any case the harddisk-system is the most important part of your server choice. Anything less then a hardware RAID 0 (with a battery backed controller) will not give you decent performance.

Regards
Thomas

[1] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/...trictions.html

#2

Jean-David Beyer wrote:

[...]

Quote:

very heavy duty environment, with hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of database enquiries per minutes.

[...]

Quote:

My requirements were much less than yours.

I first tried to use Microsoft Access,

Quite different requirements, indeed.

Did anybody but me read the "millions of database enquiries per minute"
part of his post?

That kind of load must be addressed at an architectural level, either by
a "cache the hell" approach, or by a distributed non-relational db

The OP should look at the scaling choices done by Facebook, Google and
Amazon, if he didn't overestimate his needs by a great amount.

#3

joel garry, 16.02.2009 18:51:

Quote:

As to the database engine: There is a reason I'm strongly biased
towards Oracle. That reason being, unless there is something special
about the processing involved, either exceedingly simple, complex or
specialized, it is near impossible to build a bespoke system cheaper
than buy and modify off the shelf software. For business systems,
ACID is a very important consideration, and Oracle simply handles the
concurrency issues better for most business processes.

Don't under-estimate Postgres here.

The concurrency and ACID handling there is matching Oracle's implementation (and it does not have a "snapshot too old error"

)

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Re: Which SQL is the best for servers?

comp.databases comp.databases

Re: Which SQL is the best for servers? - 02-16-2009 , 01:59 AM

Re: Which SQL is the best for servers? - 02-16-2009 , 07:39 AM

Re: Which SQL is the best for servers? - 02-17-2009 , 03:11 AM