Tech items, random thoughts, and perhaps a dash of insight.
Slanted Advertisment - MSSQL vs Oracle
motokochan | 30 June, 2005 22:42
Perhaps you've seen the advertisment Microsoft has been running lately. It claims to show that their MS-SQL Server is faster than Oracle. I guess they are trying to prove their software is better than time-tested enterprise stuff. Perhaps they are worried Linux is taking up the market they are trying to get into, and they know once something becomes intrenched, it is almost impossible to remove. They have that kind of lock on the desktop.
Anyway, you can check out the advert above. You might wonder how Microsoft got those results. I mean, even if MSSQL was good, it can't be that good. If it was, more people would be talking about that. Well, perhaps the explanation would be that the tests were skewed?
If you thought that, you'd be
correct. That tiny print on the right side of the advert has the
configuration of the test machines. Here is an excert with just the
config showing:
...The benchmark was performed on an HP ProLiant DL585 server with SAP R/3 Enterprise Release 4.70 software running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition. The ProLiant was configured with four AMD Opteron 875 series dual core processors running at 2.2GHz with 128KBL1 cache and 1MB L2 cache and 32GB Advanced ECC PC3200 DDR SDRAM...
... The benchmark was performed on an HP Integrity Model rx4640-8 server ... running HP-UX 11i and Oracle 9i. The HP was configured as an SMP 4-way with four Intel Itanium 2 processors running at 1.5GHz with 32KB L1 cache, 256KB L2 cache, and 32GB RAM...
Hm.
Aside from the complaint that they should have used the same machine
for a fair review, it looks like they are using a much better machine
for the Windows server. Four dual-core Opterons? Last I knew that meant
it was technically eight processors. also note the speed difference.
Looks like an unfair test to me.
Remember to always get the details when you see tests. It often helps show where a problem might be in the figures, or shows it was done fairly.
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Re: Slanted Advertisment - MSSQL vs Oracle
Motoko-chan | 01/07/2005, 01:14
Even more fun was the IIS vs Apache test. I don't think they ran ads for it, but it was about as lopsided as it could be made.
For the SSL test, they made sure Apache was using the slowest encryption method while IIS was using the fastest. No surprise that IIS could do more transactions. I think they hid this fact in the middle of the report somewhere. No one would notice it unless they bothered to read the whole thing.
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Lovely
Shadowsun | 01/07/2005, 00:54
This really seems run of the mill for microsoft. I havn't seen any balanced tests run either by them or by ziff davis, one of their branch companies (via, originally, a corporation in japan.)
Nonetheless, their lack of honesty is truely appalling, in the general figures they present. They ought to do it just a little bit more equitable and be honest with their shortcomings. If they were, I'd be much more likely to use them - I'll take living with imperfection. Promise me the moon and give me an onion, and you'll piss me off.