MySQL Bugs: #69941: Inaccurate doc in reference manual for SSL performance

Bug #69941	Inaccurate doc in reference manual for SSL performance
Submitted:	6 Aug 2013 16:27	Modified:	16 Sep 2013 17:48
Reporter:	Rodney Beede	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Documentation	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	5.5,5.6,5.7	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Daniel So	CPU Architecture:	Any
Tags:	documentation, performance, Reference Manual

Description:
The Reference Manual for MySQL has a section titled "Connecting Securely Using SSL" (see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/connector-j-reference-using-ssl.html).

This section states: "The performance penalty for enabling SSL is an increase in query processing time between 35% and 50%, depending on the size of the query, and the amount of data it returns."

This information is inaccurate as the performance penalty for using SSL is not that large (see http://www.yassl.com/files/yassl_securing_mysql.pdf). This is a subjective statement which varies widely depending on the hardware, version, and compilation options (e.g. OpenSSL vs yaSSL) used among other possible factors.

Placing performance numbers with or without supporting data is not helpful because it becomes out of date quickly.

How to repeat:
Visit the documentation in the reference manual.

MySQL 5.7 Reference Manual :: 21 Connectors and APIs :: 21.3 MySQL Connector/J :: 21.3.5 Connector/J (JDBC) Reference :: 21.3.5.5 Connecting Securely Using SSL

Suggested fix:
Remove this statement from the documentation.

If desirable replace it with a statement similar to the following:

The performance overhead for enabling SSL varies dependent on multiple factors including (but not limited to): the size of the query, the amount of data returned, server hardware, SSL library used, network bandwidth, etc.

It is recommended that you benchmark your particular work load and test multiple configurations to find the optimal performance for your situation.

Thank you for the bug report.

The sentence changed to:

"There is a performance penalty for enabling SSL, the severity of which depends on multiple factors including (but not limited to) the size of the query, the amount of data returned, the server hardware, the SSL library used, the network bandwidth, and so on."