Forum OpenACS Q&A: Oracle Million Dollar Challenge

Posted by Marshall Trammell,III on 01/30/01 06:14 PM

Is there any way to collect the one million dollars with a postgres
database. Would the Oracle guys come in and put their system on 12
disk drives? Three times faster seems like an awful lot.

2: Response to Oracle Million Dollar Challenge (response to 1)

Posted by Li-fan Chen on 01/31/01 10:03 AM

Having access to the source isn't a silver bullet, but there must be something you can do. What are some ideas you have in mind that will enable PostgreSQL to be 10 or 20 times faster than it used to be? What kind of application will this tuning be effective for? Will you be writing tools to help people tune PostgreSQL more effectively? Or perhaps rearchitecting the database engine so that it is more easily enhancible? What do you have in mind?

3: Response to Oracle Million Dollar Challenge (response to 1)

Posted by Marshall Trammell,III on 01/31/01 04:33 PM

I do not have the expertise to enhance postgresql.
My interest - purely monetary
That's a lot of money.

I find it hard to believe that the solutions from
IBM,SYBASE,CA,MS  etc. are 1/3 as fast as Oracle.
I saw Oracle's ad the other night and thought
it was a rather wreckless challenge.

Is Oracle really over three times faster than Postgres 7.1?
I wonder what Oracle's definition of speed in this context is?

4: Response to Oracle Million Dollar Challenge (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/31/01 04:34 PM

When the challenge first came out it was widely viewed as being
defined in a way that in practice meant it was unwinnable.

5: Response to Oracle Million Dollar Challenge (response to 1)

Posted by Malachi Kenney on 01/31/01 07:27 PM

Part of the challenge is that you must purchase not only Oracle, but also any and all hardware and consulting services that the Oracle Corporation sees fit to prescribe for you. Even if the challenge is winnable, it seems unlikely that the one million dollar prize will be enough to recoup your costs. It goes without saying, of course, that you will never be compensated for the time and energy you spend. It is a bad idea to look at this "contest" as a way to make a quick million.

In any case, raw speed is hardly the only reason to choose a database.