[MUD-Dev] Is database access a bottleneck?

[Sean Kelly]

Dave Rickey wrote:
 
> MySQL is not used for anything mission-critical, it stores data
> that is used to display character and guild information on the
> Camelot Herald, and never gets near real game data.  It is very
> well suited for such an application, giving performance well above
> that we could get on the same hardware from Oracle, MSSQL Server,
> or PostGres.

The problem with MySQL, last time I checked, is that it doesn't
support stored procedures.  This is the real route to DB performance
-- dynamically compiled queries are quite slow by comparison.  MySQL
may be fast for what it is, but I'd never use it for a critical
system.

> The price is also right, if I could tell you the terms Oracle
> quoted for a liscense, your jaw would drop.  It's not nearly as
> reliable, but as I said, it's not used for anything
> mission-critical.

Last time I checked, a single-license of Oracle Enterprise was ~
$700 for the x86 version... and I think the *nix version was the
same price.

> I might add, I know that UO and EQ both use "name brand" DBMS
> systems (or at least did at launch) and it has caused them
> tremendously more trouble than we have ever had, mostly because of
> an inability to handle bursting loads and large amounts of fallow
> data.

IMO this is attributable to poor game or database design.  While
there were some problem with eariler versions of SQL Server (backing
up a live DB caused a massive performance hit, DB check and repair
operations took hours, and replication stank), none of these
problems should have resulted in the issues you mention.

As a reference -- One of my first jobs was in R&D at a major telco
and we handled massive amounts of live calling traffic with SQL
Server 6 running on P90s as the back end (okay, it was pretty fancy
at the time). The system data was all stored and generated from SQL
and was queried dynamically as the calls were in progress.  And this
was SQL Server on PCs.  If it works for a telco (where lag and
downtime aren't even an option), it can certainly work for an online
game.

That isn't to say your system isn't exceedingly fast or stable.
Just that it seems DBs are often discounted based on second-hand
tales of woe from people who didn't really know what they were doing
in the first place.

Sean


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