On 10-Nov-2005 11:11:13 +0100, you wrote:
Some recent tests I've done that compare Ebenezer Enterprises and Boost.serialization's performance show the Boost.serialization approach to be 7 to 9 times slower than the Ebenezer Enterprises approach. I'm using Linux 2.6.12, gcc 4.0.2 (with -O3) and a Boost.serialization library from the release tree. A test that compared the times to serialize/send a list<int> took 7.4 times longer with Boost than Ebenezer. I timed the following Boost: oArch & lst; // oArch is a binary_oarchive
Ebenezer: msgs.Send(buffer, lst); // In order to compare apples to
// I removed a section of code at the
end
// of the Send function that flushes
apples, the
buffer.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This seems wrong to me, comparing library to library as it is written
and as the user see's it would be much more interesting and to me makes this test pointless. If you can really just remove the flush then it probably shouldnt be there in the first place or configurable by the user on an archive by archive basis.
To the best of my knowledge the following are functionally equivalent. Boost: oArch & lst; oFile.flush(); //oFile is an ofstream used to //build oArch. Ebenezer: msgs.Send(buffer, lst); // where I didn't remove anything // from Send's implementation. I think as you say, whether a flush gets embedded in the Send function should be configurable, but right now it just is. I'll admit it would be better if I didn't have to remove (#if 0) the end of the Send function, but I don't think that invalidates anything.
In a second test I added a deque of int... Boost: oArch & lst; oArch & dq; // std::deque<int> dq;
Ebenezer: msgs.Send(buffer, lst, dq);
In this case Boost took 9.1 times longer than Ebenezer Enterprises approach. If you want to run these tests with other compilers I think that would be helpful. I've been warned not to put too much emphasis on numbers from gcc.
It would be interesting to see what the results are with a vanilla version of your library as well as a feature by feature comparision to
see if you really are comparing apples to apples.
Both Boost and s11n.net support things like XML that Ebenezer doesn't. Boost in my opinion mistakenly tries to support "versioning." We don't and I don't think s11n does either. Brian