Benchmark(et)ing
Benchmarking and benchmarketing both have a purpose. Both also have a bad reputation. A frequently expressed opinion is that benchmark results are useless. I usually disagree. I don't mind benchmarketing and think it is a required part of product development but I am not fond of benchmarketing disguised as benchmarking. Benchmarketing is a common activity for many DBMS products whether they are closed or open source. Most products need new users to maintain viability and marketing is part of the process. The goal for benchmarketing is to show that A is better than B. Either by accident or on purpose good benchmarketing results focus on the message A is better than B rather than A is better than B in this context . Note that the context can be critical and includes the hardware, workload, whether both systems were properly configured and some attempt to explain why one system was faster. I spend a lot of time running benchmarks. They are useful when the context for the result i