# Ruby performance

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 22, 2006, 2:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615 "2006-03-22T14:51:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 2:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/1 "2006-03-22T14:51:52Z")

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I’m considering using Ruby to re-write and extract, transform, and  
load process for an online database. This will replace an existing VB  
system that does most of the T of the ETL in T-SQL(don’t ask).

My replacement choices come down to .Net(C# or VB), Perl, and Ruby.  
Since we can have up to 3 million updates to the database during the  
day, performance is an issue. Does Ruby perform as well at large text  
file transformations as Perl? Does C# for that matter?

At this point my gut feeling is to write the ETL in Ruby and transform  
it to Perl if performance becomes an issue.

Any thoughts?

thanks,

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**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/2 "2006-03-22T15:06:31Z")

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On 3/22/06, Keith S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> it to Perl if performance becomes an issue.  
> Write it in Ruby, then if you have performance issues – profile,  
> benchmark, and optimize. If you really get stuck RubyInline will  
> be your friend _far_ more than Perl ever would.

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**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/3 "2006-03-22T15:09:28Z")

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> Write it in Ruby, then if you have performance issues – profile,  
> benchmark, and optimize. If you really get stuck RubyInline will  
> be your friend _far_ more than Perl ever would.

Unless he uses Perl::Inline 🙂

(Not advocating for Perl here, just remembered where RubyInline comes  
from)

-Sascha E.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/4 "2006-03-22T15:19:30Z")

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On 3/22/06, Sascha E. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > Write it in Ruby, then if you have performance issues – profile,  
> > benchmark, and optimize. If you really get stuck RubyInline will  
> > be your friend _far_ more than Perl ever would.
> 
> Unless he uses Perl::Inline 🙂

You’d still have to use Perl ;^)

> (Not advocating for Perl here, just remembered where RubyInline comes from)

Well, zenspider’s implementation is cool enough that it got Ingy to  
look twice (and, iirc, to pull some ideas into the Perl version).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 8:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/5 "2006-03-22T20:26:20Z")

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Keith S. wrote:

> Any thoughts?

Of course 😉

3 million updates per day doesn’t mean much to me. With a little  
arithmetic,  
that looks like a sustained average load of ~ 33 TPS.

Having said that, I don’t know if that’s reasonably within Ruby’s  
capabilities  
or not–I just think TPS (transactions per second) is a more common  
metric  
for performance of databased applications. (But, I could be wrong 😉

As a Ruby newbie, unless it’s grossly out of the ballpark, I’d probably  
try to  
build it in Ruby first, then optimize, then consider upgrading hardware,  
and  
then consider switching to another language.

Randy K.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/6 "2006-03-22T15:28:59Z")

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Keith S. wrote:

> it to Perl if performance becomes an issue.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Usually client tool performance is shadowed by DB performance and  
network communication times. Due to the nature of the DB it has to do  
more complex IO operations to store the data than the client which reads  
just a plain text file sequentially or writes it sequentially. I’d go  
with Ruby.

Kind regards

```
robert
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 8:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/7 "2006-03-22T20:50:57Z")

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On Mar 22, 2006, at 2:26 PM, Randy K. wrote:

> 3 million updates per day doesn’t mean much to me. With a little  
> arithmetic,  
> that looks like a sustained average load of ~ 33 TPS.

By an interesting coincidence, Rails sites tend to support about 30  
hits/second/server on decent hardware, assuming they have to go all  
the way to the database and render views. With action caching (which  
bypasses the database and view rendering, but still runs Ruby code),  
I’ve seen benchmarks in the 500 hits/second range.

So Ruby might very well be a plausible solution, depending on a  
number of factors. Given the sweet simplicity of ActiveRecord, you  
could even spend a couple of days building a prototype and seeing how  
fast it goes. 🙂

Cheers,  
Eric

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/49beb7/32.png) [@ksader](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ksader)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-performance/55615/8 "2006-03-22T22:57:41Z")

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Eric Kidd wrote:

> So Ruby might very well be a plausible solution, depending on a number  
> of factors. Given the sweet simplicity of ActiveRecord, you could even  
> spend a couple of days building a prototype and seeing how fast it  
> goes. 🙂
> 
> Cheers,  
> Eric

Simple test, ran from  
within RDE editor  
windows xp,  
testog=# select version();

## version

PostgreSQL 8.1.3 on i686-pc-mingw32, compiled by GCC gcc.exe (GCC)  
3.4.2 (mingw-special)  
(1 row)  
with 119 odd processes running ( windows, cygwin, etc, etc)  
1GB ram

10000 inserts in \< 60 seconds = 167 tps.

testog=# truncate ogcomment;  
TRUNCATE TABLE  
testog=# select \* from ogcomment;  
title | body | author | create\_time | oid  
-------±-----±-------±------------±----  
(0 rows)

I, [2006-03-22T16:44:48.183000 #3220] INFO – : Og uses the Psql store.  
Wed Mar 22 16:44:49 Eastern Standard Time 2006  
Wed Mar 22 16:45:44 Eastern Standard Time 2006  
D, [2006-03-22T16:44:49.464000 #3220] DEBUG – : Table ogcomment already  
exists  
D, [2006-03-22T16:44:49.495000 #3220] DEBUG – : PostgreSQL processing  
foreign key constraints  
D, [2006-03-22T16:44:49.495000 #3220] DEBUG – : PostgreSQL finished  
setting constraints. No action was taken in 0.00 seconds.  
Completed(0)

## testog=# select count(\*) from ogcomment; count

10000  
(1 row)

testog=# select min(create\_time),max(create\_time) from ogcomment;  
min | max  
---------------------±--------------------  
2006-03-22 16:44:49 | 2006-03-22 16:45:44  
(1 row)

require ‘og’

class Comment  
property :title, String  
property :body, String  
property :author, String  
property :create\_time, Time  
end  
og\_psql = {  
:destroy =\> true,  
:store =\> :psql,  
:user =\> ‘rthompso’,  
:password =\> ‘rthompso’,  
:name =\> ‘testog’  
}

Og.setup(og\_psql)

c = Comment.new  
c.title = ‘Hello’  
c.body = ‘World’  
c.create\_time = Time.now  
c.author = ‘tml’

puts Time.now

# save the object in the database

1.upto(10000) { |i|  
c = Comment.new  
c.title = ‘Hello’  
c.body = ‘World’  
c.create\_time = Time.now  
c.author = ‘tml’  
c.save  
}  
puts Time.now