On 6/6/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But I think the above is giving Oracle Corp a little too much credit.
Perhaps. However, Oracle has a thousand or so knobs which can control almost every aspect of every subsystem. If you know how they interact with each other and how to use them properly, they can make a huge difference in performance. Most people do not know all the knobs or understand what difference each can make given the theory and architecture of the system, which results in poor general configurations. Arguably, there is a cost associated with having someone staffed and/or consulted that has the depth of knowledge required to tune it in such a manner which goes back to a basic cost/benefit analysis. Oracle, while seeming like a one-size-fits-all system, has the same basic issue as PostgreSQL and everyone else; to get optimum performance, it has to be tuned specifically for the application/workload at hand.
Corporations exist to make money, and the reason they prohibit doing anything with their software and then publishing it without their approval is because they want to control all the public perception of their software, whether deserved or not.
Of course. Which is why audited benchmarks like SPEC and TPC are around. While they may not represent one's particular workload, they are the only way to fairly demonstrate comparable performance.
Every user of any large software system (Oracle or otherwise) has their favourite horror story about the grotty corners of that software;
Of course, but they also never say why it was caused. With Oracle, almost all bad-performance cases I've seen are related to improper tuning and/or hardware; even by experienced DBAs. -- Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324 EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301 33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor | jharris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/
