title: CockroachDB slow inserts compared to MariaDB?
body: <p>Im doing some tests to see if i can use CockroachDB for a small project of mine. I created two identical VPS'es in the same DC and installed CockroachDB on one of them and MariaDB on the other, then created two test databases to store the data. Doing 1M inserts at a time in batches of 5K. 
  I did no change on neither of VPS/db servers, they just run as they are after install. </p>
  
  <p>CockroachDB schema: </p>
  
  <pre><code>root@:26257/test&gt; show create table customers;
  +-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |   Table   |                           CreateTable                            
  |
  +-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  | customers | CREATE TABLE customers (␤                                        
  |
  |           |     id INT NOT NULL DEFAULT unique_rowid(),␤                     
  |
  |           |     first_name STRING NULL,␤                                     
  |
  |           |     last_name STRING NULL,␤                                      
  |
  |           |     age INT NULL,␤                                               
  |
  |           |     CONSTRAINT "primary" PRIMARY KEY (id ASC),␤                  
  |
  |           |     FAMILY "primary" (id, first_name, last_name, age)␤ |
  |           | )                                                                
  |
  +-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>MariaDB:</p>
  
  <pre><code>MariaDB [test]&gt; show create table customers \G;
  *************************** 1. row ***************************
     Table: customers
  Create Table: CREATE TABLE `customers` (
    `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `first_name` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,
    `last_name` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,
    `age` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
  ) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=7000001 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The insert script is something pretty dumb, just quickly put together to insert a bunch of data into database, using golang (it's the same for both CockroachDB and MariaDB with small differences, i.e: connection string):</p>
  
  <pre><code>package main
  
  import "database/sql"
  import _ "github.com/lib/pq"
  import "fmt"
  import "strings"
  import "math/rand"
  import "time"
  
  func init() {
      rand.Seed(time.Now().UnixNano())
  }
  
  var letterRunes = []rune("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ")
  
  func RandStringRunes(n int) string {
      b := make([]rune, n)
      for i := range b {
          b[i] = letterRunes[rand.Intn(len(letterRunes))]
      }
      return string(b)
  }
  
  
  func main() {
      db, err := sql.Open("postgres", "postgresql://root@localhost:26257/test?sslmode=disable")
      if err != nil {
          panic(err)
      }
  
          sqlStr := "INSERT INTO customers(first_name, last_name, age) VALUES"
      insert := ""
      for i := 0; i &lt; 1000000; i++ {
          fname := RandStringRunes(30)
          lname := RandStringRunes(39)
          age := rand.Intn(100)
          insert += fmt.Sprintf("('%s', '%s', %d),", fname, lname, age)
  
          if i%5000 == 0 {
              sql := sqlStr + strings.Trim(insert, ",")
              insert = ""
              _, err := db.Exec(sql)
              if err != nil {
                  panic(err)
              }
          }
      }
  
      if len(insert) &gt; 0 {
          sql := sqlStr + strings.Trim(insert, ",")
          insert = ""
          _, err := db.Exec(sql)
          if err != nil {
              panic(err)
          }
      }
  
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The results:</p>
  
  <p>MariaDB:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@mariadb ~]# time ./insert
  
  real    0m40.650s
  user    0m33.784s
  sys 0m0.112s
  [root@mariadb ~]# 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>CockroachDB: </p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@cockroachdb ~]# time ./insert
  
  real    3m42.909s
  user    0m35.620s
  sys 0m0.144s
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm using MariaDB: </p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@mariadb ~]# mysql --version
  mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 5.5.52-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and CockroachDB: </p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@cockroachdb ~]# cockroach version
  Build Tag:    v1.0.1
  Build Time:   2017/05/25 15:17:49
  Distribution: CCL
  Platform:     linux amd64
  Go Version:   go1.8.1
  C Compiler:   gcc 6.3.0
  Build SHA-1:  50fd18dcf8da75a0f4980344a885fe6105d0cf23
  Build Type:   release
  [root@cockroachdb ~]#
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am aware that using random data might affect the numbers, but still, i get these numbers almost all the times, so there is enough consistency.</p>
  
  <p>Are these numbers correct for CockroachDB, are the inserts slower in the above version? </p>
  
  <p>Also, counting all the records in table is slow too(<code>select count(*) from customers</code>), not sure exactly by how much since i don't get a timer in the result set as i get from MariaDB server, but the MariaDB server returns the result in under 5 seconds, while CockroachDB takes well over 10 seconds from my counting.</p>
  
  <p>I like that altering the table to add a new column for example is just instant with CockroachDB while with MariDB took almost 30 seconds on a table with 5M records.</p>
  
  <p>Any thoughts are highly appreciated.<br>
  Thanks.</p>