PostgreSQL publishes first real benchmark

greg1104 writes: "The current version of PostgreSQL now has its first real benchmark, a SPECjAppServer2004 submission from Sun Microsystems. The results required substantial tuning of many performance-related PostgreSQL parameters, some of which are set to extremely low values in the default configuration — a known issue that contributes to why many untuned PostgreSQL installations appear sluggish compared to its rivals. The speed result is close but slightly faster than an earlier Sun submission using MySQL 5 (with enough hardware differences to make a direct comparison of those results unfair), and comes close to keeping up with Oracle on similarly priced hardware — but with a large software savings. Having a published result on the level playing field of an industry-standard benchmark like SPECjAppServer2004, with documentation on all the tuning required to reach that performance level, should make PostgreSQL an easier sell to corporate customers who are wary of adopting open-source applications for their critical databases."