Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases now! discount-offer-chevron-icon
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required.
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
PostgreSQL 10 High Performance

You're reading from   PostgreSQL 10 High Performance Expert techniques for query optimization, high availability, and efficient database maintenance

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781788474481
Length 508 pages
Edition 3rd Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Enrico Pirozzi Enrico Pirozzi
Author Profile Icon Enrico Pirozzi
Enrico Pirozzi
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (18) Chapters Close

Preface 1. PostgreSQL Versions FREE CHAPTER 2. Database Hardware 3. Database Hardware Benchmarking 4. Disk Setup 5. Memory for Database Caching 6. Server Configuration Tuning 7. Routine Maintenance 8. Database Benchmarking 9. Database Indexing 10. Query Optimization 11. Database Activity and Statistics 12. Monitoring and Trending 13. Pooling and Caching 14. Scaling with Replication 15. Partitioning Data 16. Avoiding Common Problems 17. Other Books You May Enjoy

Performance of historical PostgreSQL releases

In November 2005, PostgreSQL 8.1 was released. It included a number of internal architectural changes, some of which aimed to improve how fast the database would run on a multiprocessor system with many active clients. The result was a major improvement in the ability of the database to scale upwards to handle a heavy load. Benchmarks on modern hardware really highlight just how far that version leapfrogged earlier ones. You can find an excellent performance comparison of versions 8.0 through 8.4 from György Vilmos at http://suckit.blog.hu/2009/09/29/postgresql_history. This shows exactly how dramatic these improvements have been.

This test gives a transactions per second (TPS) figure that measures the total system speed, and you can run it in either a read-only mode or one that includes writes. The read-only performance improved by over four times from 8.0 to 8.1 and more than doubled again by 8.3:

Version

Peak read-only TPS

# of clients at peak

8.0.21

1256

4

8.1.17

5620

14

8.2.13

8109

18

8.3.7

13984

22

8.4.1

13546

22

The rise in the number of clients at the peak load gives us an idea of how well the database internals handle access to shared resources. The area 8.1 in particular included a significant upgrade. Performance improved similarly on the write side, with almost an 8 times gain between 8.0 and 8.3:

Version

Peak write TPS

# of clients at peak

8.0.21

361

2

8.1.17

873

10

8.2.13

1358

14

8.3.7

2795

18

8.4.1

2713

12

The small decrease in performance from 8.3 to 8.4 in both these tests is due to some subtle retuning of the database to improve its worst-case performance. More statistics are collected in 8.4 to improve complicated queries, at the expense of slightly slowing the sort of trivial ones tested here.

These improvements have been confirmed by other benchmarking results, albeit normally not covering such a wide range of versions. It's easy to see that any conclusion about PostgreSQL performance reached before late 2005, when 8.1 shipped, is completely out of date at this point. The speed improvement in 2008's 8.3 release was an additional large leap. Versions before 8.3 are not representative of the current performance and there are other reasons to prefer using that one or a later one too.

You have been reading a chapter from
PostgreSQL 10 High Performance - Third Edition
Published in: Apr 2018
Publisher: Packt
ISBN-13: 9781788474481
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime