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Comment by ifcologne | Hacker News Reader

Ingo from ArangoDB here. I agree that vendor tests are always biased, of course you want to show that your product is competitive.

But as there is no independent institution that compared our product and as we want to know where we stand with ArangoDB, Claudius did his own tests. And as the work is already done, why not share it.

We tried our best to do it as open as possible. PostgreSQL performed very well and we have a problem with memory consumption - have a look at the charts, we will try to improve there.

- Every database configuration is public

- All test scripts are available on Github

- We publish updates if we get pull-requests or comments with suggestions for improvements

We did that before and after the last test, some database vendors sent us improved snapshots of their databases which found their way into the latest products (OrientDB and Neo4j).

If you have suggestions for improvements, please let us know.

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> PostgreSQL performed very well

Despite the fact that you crippled it by not using jsonb columns.

Why so hostile? Personally, I assume this is just an instance of them not being PostgeSQL experts. So, before jumping to conclusions (namely that they deliberatly skewed their test, despite being very open in the way they described the setup), I'll instead wait and see -- perhaps they'll explain why they used json instead of jsonb, or perhaps (better!) they can updat the test to also include jsonb.

> I assume this is just an instance of them not being PostgeSQL experts.

this illuminates the need for "experts" in the different components in the stack. it's intellectually dishonest to claim that a technology is not up to the task when it's not been properly treated in the first place.

If they're not Postgres experts then they shouldn't be including Postgres in the line-up. Or ask someone that ask someone that knows better.

That's why they welcome pull-requests.

They wanted to play with the other kids, but no one invited them, so they threw their own party despite not knowing how to throw one.

Biggest problem of (small) German tech companies IMO.

I worked for one myself and they had really good core technology, but that was it. The angelo-saxon companies always outplayed them, because they're just so much better at PR. Even their developers are better at this than most marketeers that burn money on a daily basis in Germany...

I think his hostility comes from the fact that if you google just "postgresql json" the second hit is the official documentation that goes over jsonb right in the second paragraph.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html

You can also see that the very first link outside of the official documentation:

https://www.compose.io/articles/is-postgresql-your-next-json...

Explains the benefits of jsonb and how to use indexes.

If you're going to include a database, at the very least do 20 minutes of research on it. If that can't be given, then just don't include something.

That's like saying "I've just installed MongoDB and read the intro documentation page, I'm now going to benchmark it against a MySQL cluster, which I have years of experience with, and that I helped develop." (E.g.: they developed ArangoDB, so they should be experts in at least that, right?)

> Why so hostile? Personally, I assume this is just an instance of them not being PostgeSQL experts.

Postgres' official documentation on json and jsonb is rather concise: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html

The difference between the types is described in paragraph two. So, they either benchmarked Postgres while having no idea whatsoever what they were doing, or they were deliberately crippling the competition.

Neither option is confidence inspiring.

(And the first option seems sketchy, seeing how they then went and re-created the whole benchmark as classical RDBMS setup for the second postgres test.)

If they weren't going jsonb and the gin jsonb-path-opts index, they shouldn't have even included postgres.

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