> > I tried this query :
> >
> > SELECT sum(val) FROM fact0
> >
> > for Postgres, Db2 and Oracle. The results were
> >
> > Postgres    2m25s
> > Db2         40s
> > Oracle      50s
> >
> > This seems to be the likely culprit. I suspect that the "many
> > block/page read at once" type optimzations (prefetch for Db2 and mutli
> > block read for Oracle) mean that table sequential scans are faster for
> > these guys than Postgres.
>
> Hm.  The theory about simple sequential reads is that we expect the
> kernel to optimize the disk access, since it'll recognize that we are
> doing sequential access to the table file and do read-aheads.  Or that's
> the theory, anyway.
>
> I am not convinced that inefficient I/O is the story here.  We could be
> paying the price of our very generalized implementation of aggregates.
> It would be interesting to know how much CPU time was chewed up by each
> DB during the SELECT sum().  It'd also be interesting to know just what
> datatype is being summed.
>
>                       regards, tom lane

I monitored the cpu consumed by the relevant db processes ( counting the time 
noted against each process from ps -ef, hope that was what you had in mind ) 

DB              Elapsed         Cpu 
Postgres        2m25s           2m01s
Db2             50s             30s
Oracle          40s             18s

( I seem to have got my numbers for Db2 and the big O around the wrong way in 
the last post ! )

I thought it was worth trying a different query as well : 

SELECT count(*) FROM fact0 

DB              Elapsed         Cpu
Postgres        1m5s            32s
Db2             23s             15s
Oracle          37s             11s

Finally the datatypes etc for the table

         Table "fact0"
 Attribute |  Type   | Modifier 
-----------+---------+----------
 d0key     | integer | 
 d1key     | integer | 
 d2key     | integer | 
 val       | integer | 
 filler    | text    | 
Index: fact0_pk

In terms of caching etc.... the first query was run from a cold start, the 
second immediatly afterwards.

The Postgres db has 4000 (8K) pages of data buffers and the table itself is 
57000 pages. ( others were configured analagously )

regards

Mark

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