Mark Boyd writes:

>"the cost/performance "curve" seems to be favoring SQL more and more"
>
>A bigger crock of Crapola(tm), I haven't heard since someone said "SQL was
>simpler to use than Image". The only performance curve I've seen with SPL
>is downward.

SQL, I presume.

>I'm currently babysitting an SQL app that is averaging 3
>transactions per second with a maximum speed of 194 transactions per
>second.
>These are inserts, updates and deletes that are transferred from our hp.

IMAGE is dog-slow. Of course, I'm using sequentially-increasing integer
keys in masters, using decreasing sort keys in sorted chains (and all my
chains are sorted), and I'm using Quiz and doing sequential reads for all
my reports (and database-level locking, too), but it's not MY fault that
IMAGE is slow.

You need new pimply-faced gurus. Intelligent design isn't in any greater
supply today than it was in 1980, but the demand is a couple of orders of
magnitude greater. People who don't understand their tools are dangerous.
An RDBMS is a more complex tool than IMAGE, but it's perfectly possible
not to understand IMAGE. Quite a number of consultants make their money
by understanding IMAGE better than the average programmer.

>Our pimply-faced gurus downstairs have upgraded the server, rebuilt the
>server, reinstalled the software, upgraded the software and can't get any
>more speed out of it.

There's your clue. Blaming the hardware for performance problems, I've
found, is the first resort of people who aren't smart enough to think of
anything else.

Many of the courses for RDBMSs, and virtually all of the self-guided
tutorials, teach HOW to do things, but not WHEN or WHY. This means that
people trained using these courses can get prototypes up and running
quickly -- most impressive, of course -- but their systems don't scale up
for production. This isn't the fault of the DBMS, any more than
30,000-entry random-insert sorted chains are the fault of IMAGE.

-- Bruce


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