Oracle's claims about speed-ups of their database are just that, claims. Their licenses explicitly disallow benchmarking, so basically we are legally bound to rely on their word.

Their license only disallows publishing the result of a benchmark

But you were always allowed to run your own benchmarks internally.

Back then, you could have installed 10gR1 and 10gR2 and compare the sort performance on identical data sets and queries.

TFA is a post by the author of the algorithm, talking about the performance they originally predicted and later observed after implementing it while they were working at oracle, now that the patent has expired and anyone can implement the algorithm.

So:

- you are calling them a liar

- and are asserting you can not evaluate the claim even though you can implement and benchmark the algorithm in whatever DBMS you favour

I can evaluate the claim now, but I would not have been able to evaluate the speed gain of an Oracle database using whatever proprietary implementation they are using. Claiming I've called author anything is putting words in my mouth.