Adds a paired benchmark of informix-db (pure Python) against IfxPy
3.0.5 (IBM's C-bound driver via OneDB ODBC) on identical workloads
against the same Informix dev container.
Headline result: pure Python is competitive — and faster on 2/5
benchmarks where wire round-trip dominates over codec/marshaling.
| Benchmark | IfxPy | informix-db | Result |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| select_one_row (single-row latency) | 128 us | 116 us | us 9% faster |
| select_systables_first_10 | 126 us | 184 us | IfxPy 32% faster |
| select_bench_table_all (1k rows) | 969 us | 855 us | us 12% faster |
| executemany(1000) in txn | 21.5 ms | 30.8 ms | IfxPy 30% slower |
| cold_connect_disconnect | 11.0 ms | 10.9 ms | comparable |
Why the surprising wins: IfxPy's path is Python -> OneDB ODBC ->
libifdmr -> wire. Ours is Python -> wire. When wire round-trip
dominates (single-row, bulk fetch), the missing abstraction layer
makes us faster. When per-row marshaling dominates (executemany),
IfxPy's C-level execute(stmt, tuple) beats Python BIND-PDU build.
Files added under tests/benchmarks/compare/:
* Dockerfile.ifxpy — Ubuntu 20.04 base with IfxPy + OneDB drivers
* ifxpy_bench.py — IfxPy benchmark workloads matching test_*_perf.py
* README.md — methodology, results, install gauntlet, reproduction
The IfxPy install gauntlet itself is part of the comparison story:
modern Python 3.11 (not 3.13), setuptools <58, permissive CFLAGS,
manual download of 92MB OneDB ODBC tarball, four LD_LIBRARY_PATH
directories, libcrypt.so.1 (deprecated 2018, missing on Arch /
Fedora 35+ / RHEL 9). Versus our `pip install informix-db`.
README.md (project root): added "Compared to IfxPy" section under
Performance with the headline numbers and a pointer to the full
methodology.
.gitignore: keep Dockerfile/script/README under tests/benchmarks/
compare/, exclude the 92MB OneDB tarball and the local venv.
Ryan Malloy
a9e1f17bae