[Author Prev][Author Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Author Index][Thread Index]

Re: [school-discuss] Web-based School Administration...



I'm sure that the open source dbs could handle the read-load of our product,
but the write-load kills them.  We support teacher period attendance and
teacher gradebook scaled up to the mega district (+100k students).  If
attendance can't be taken at nearly instantaneous times, teachers will have
the product thrown out.  At that level you need to perfectly optimize the
table schema, and index design for the quickest writes possible, and then
analyze the locking patterns and query execution paths during a full
transaction load.  SQL Server's development and optimization tools are
unequaled, and their query engine is impressive.  I love to rip on Microsoft
as much as every other open source user, but SQL Server has earned my
respect.

Dave


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Myles O'Meara" <milo@fullsite.com>
To: <schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 9:26 PM
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Web-based School Administration...


On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 11:38, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 01:23, David Frankson wrote:
> > As far as databases go, we use SQL Server, and I am very happy with
> > it.  Its impressive to see 100k+ student districts and states running
> > hundreds of transactions per second.  At times we have managed to
> > push SQL Server to its limits, and we have not been able to get that
> > kind of output out of any of the open source databases.
>
> I'm surprised that you haven't been able to get that out of PostgreSQL
> or ibFirebird. MySQL, I could understand; it's fine for lots of simple
> reads but anything complex or involving many writes and it all goes
> wahoonie-shaped. Were you running through ODBC or direct? That makes
> about a 50% performance difference in some circumstances.
>
> Cheers; Leon

I'm also surprised that you have not been able to get the open source
databases to perform to a level equal or better than SQL server
(Sybase). From what I have seen the main two - MySQL and Postgres have
very good performance specs. I have found both to be very reliable
though somewhat different in performance.
I just looked on the mysql.com site to see what their latest news was.
This is just one article that highlights a point made above

"The Associated Press (AP), the world's oldest and largest news agency
with a global daily reach of 1 billion people, is leveraging the MySQL®
database to power its AP Hosted News service. The AP's mission critical
MySQL-based application serves up a massive amount of AP hosted content
and supports hundreds of thousands of transactions every day for 11,000
concurrent users."

That's not bad for an open source database.
Myles
-- 
www.schoolmation.net