# Activerecord 2.3.5's create & find slower than activerecord 2.1.2? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 14, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614 "2010-01-14T18:40:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nbits)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614/1 "2010-01-14T18:40:30Z")
Can anyone help me understand what’s going on here? We updated one of our apps from 2.1.2 to 2.3.5 hoping largely to get a little performance boost since I know there was a lot of performance improvements in the 2.3.x line. However we discovered instead that our test suite is now running around 40% slower. Looking around on line we found some reports of slowness with the built-in memcache client, but we’re not using it. So we started reducing code looking for the performance differences and eventually arrived at what appears to be around a 35% slowdown in AR::B.find & around a 20% slowdown in AR::B.create. To test this we created to bare rails apps, one 2.1.2 the other 2.3.5. Both were set to use mysql for the database: $ rails-2.1.2 bench212 -d mysql $ rails-2.3.5 bench235 -d mysql Then we run this in each $ ./script/generate model Foo $ rake db:create $ rake db:migrate Then drop this ( [AR::B benchmark · GitHub](http://gist.github.com/277319) ) in the script directory of each. The results are pretty consistently thus: Rails 2.3.5 25000 finds (7330.0ms) (7.33) 25000 creates (32942.4ms) (32.942) Rails 2.1.2 25000 finds (5.37473) 25000 creates (26.60233) Looking at the profile trees, the only one difference that stands out is in 2.3.5, 3.11% of the time is spent in ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::ConnectionHandler#retrieve\_connection\_pool which doesn’t appear in 2.1.2. We’ve tried this on two different machines (one mac running macport installed ruby, the other an x86-64 ubuntu box running stock ruby 1.8) and see similar results on each. Is this slowdown expected? Or is there something flawed in our benchmarks? Thanks! Ben ---
**Author:** ![nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nbits)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 6:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614/2 "2010-01-14T18:45:46Z")
On Jan 14, 5:30Â pm, Ben Tucker [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Might be worth asking on rails-core - this is a pretty small benchmark that others can hopefully corroborate… (FWIW I’ve also seen a performance hit on one of the apps I work with when going from 2.2.x to 2.3.x but haven’t got as far as narrowing it down to a small example like this.) Fred ---
**Author:** ![nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nbits)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2010, 9:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614/3 "2010-01-14T21:07:28Z")
On Jan 14, 12:44Â pm, Frederick C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Might be worth asking on rails-core - this is a pretty small benchmark > that others can hopefully corroborate… Thanks. I just posted over there as well. -Ben ---
**Author:** ![nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nbits)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 4:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614/4 "2010-01-15T04:37:41Z")
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Ben T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Ben, I have the following numbers: Configuration: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (PowerMac G5 2.5 GHz Quad) Ruby: 1.9.1p376 Rails: 2.3.5 with MySQL adapter: 25000 finds (16.475510) # without Model.transaction … end 25000 finds (16.259721) # with Model.transaction do … end 25000 creates (35.011375) # with Model.transaction do … end 25000 creates (3.031440) # without Model.transaction … end, using AR-Extensions to perform a bulk import Next, if your tests were actually modeling this in a real world scenario, you would be using the following techniques within your app: a) ActiveRecord::Extensions for bulk imports b) Memcached for caching because you shouldn’t be performing the same query that returns the same resultset. For example, if 100,000 people generated this query, then your database would be hit 100,000 times instead once. c) Wrap your bulk operations that can hit the database using Model.transaction do … end - because without it a transaction is being generated for each create operation. d) Queries may be also concurrent instead of just sequential as they appear in your example code. Thus, using something like Apache JMeter, you can do the proper load testing (i.e. simulate many users doing different things at various intervals). In short, for a test to be viable, one must create realistic tests that models your application in the real world to analyze your application’s performance. -Conrad Looking at the profile trees, the only one difference that stands out ---
**Author:** ![nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@nbits](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/nbits)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2010, 5:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/activerecord-2-3-5s-create-find-slower-than-activerecord-2-1-2/181614/5 "2010-01-15T05:14:33Z")
On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Conrad T. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > you would be using the following techniques within your app: > Sorry, I should have explained intent a bit more. Our goal with this > test wasn’t to model a real world > scenario (we’re not doing 25,000 creates in the test suite or app > obviously). The point is that AR::B.find & AR::B.create certainly > appear significantly slower in 2.3.5 than in 2.1.2. > a) ActiveRecord::Extensions for bulk imports > b) Memcached for caching because you shouldn’t be performing the same query > that returns the same resultset.  For example, if >    100,000 people generated this query, then your database would be hit > 100,000 times instead once. > c)  Wrap your bulk operations that can hit the database using > Model.transaction do … end  - because without it a transaction is >    being generated for each create operation. > d)  Queries may be also concurrent instead of just sequential as they appear > in your example code.  Thus, using something like Thanks for these. They’re all things we’re actually doing in the app already. Of course there are still things which we could optimize more (there always are), but I wanted to find out whether this apparent slow down in AR::B.find & AR::B.create was known. -Ben