Comments on: MonetDB for Everybody http://www.lshift.net/blog/2005/09/26/monetdb-for-everybody What happens at LShift Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:35:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.12-alpha by: matthias http://www.lshift.net/blog/2005/09/26/monetdb-for-everybody#comment-389 Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:48:57 +0000 http://www.lshift.net/blog/2005/09/26/monetdb-for-everybody#comment-389 <p>I finally got the chance to take a closer look at MonetDB - building it, installing it, and running through some performance tests.</p> <p>On one of our projects we have been plagued by MySQL's and other databases inability to efficiently execute a variety of <code>count(*)</code> queries on a table with 4 million rows. For example, MySQL will take 40 seconds to run <code>select count(*) from table</code>.</p> <p>In MonetDB the same queries return results instantly. And that's without configuring any keys or indices! I am not sure it is actually avoiding the counting in those queries - it may just be able to count very very fast.</p> <p>However, MonetDB's SQL implementation has some gaps, though it aims to conform to SQL'99 and '03, unlike MySQL's SQL'92. I also found the documentation to be in quite bad shape - there's a fair amount of it but it is really badly organized and presented. So, for the time being at least, MonetDB is still to immature to use in production systems.</p> I finally got the chance to take a closer look at MonetDB - building it, installing it, and running through some performance tests.

On one of our projects we have been plagued by MySQL’s and other databases inability to efficiently execute a variety of count(*) queries on a table with 4 million rows. For example, MySQL will take 40 seconds to run select count(*) from table.

In MonetDB the same queries return results instantly. And that’s without configuring any keys or indices! I am not sure it is actually avoiding the counting in those queries - it may just be able to count very very fast.

However, MonetDB’s SQL implementation has some gaps, though it aims to conform to SQL’99 and ‘03, unlike MySQL’s SQL’92. I also found the documentation to be in quite bad shape - there’s a fair amount of it but it is really badly organized and presented. So, for the time being at least, MonetDB is still to immature to use in production systems.

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