Re: Benchmarks was Re: Which one is better? Oracel 9i or DB2 7.2??

"Serge Rielau" <srielau_at_ca.ibm.com> wrote in message news:3CD90552.8470DFAA_at_ca.ibm.com...
> > There is not a chance I am going to find a TCP report of any value
in 90%
> > of these projects. To me they are just another form of marketing
hype.
>
> I don't thiok they are mere marketing hype. Yes, they are used for
marketing,
> but the vendors also constantly calibrate their products against
them and the
> benchmarks do comprise some "real world like" queries.
>
> Lets' take a look at materialized views (or AST, indexed views...).
Oracle and
> DB2 broke the TPC-D
> benchmark with those. Were they a benchmark special? No, even
Microsoft has
> introduced them despite not playing in TPC-D (and now TPC-R and -H).
> Also note that often the availability of the system is 6 months
after the test
> because the test uses bleeding edge technology.
> I would call TPC a sandbox - simplified? yes - but also relevant.
> Participating in the game means a vendor is serious about this kind
of
> workloads. Who is on top at any given moment is not really the point
as long
> as they are at the top every so often.
>

Hi Serge,

You raise a really good point that I meant to write but of course forgot. :) Yes, the TPC organization (which is comprised by the hardware and software vendors) do exert pressure for the vendors to provide features that may or may not have been present otherwise. By adding, for instance, materialized views, those sw vendors who want to play in that 'sandbox' need to add that feature into their product.

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Pablo Sanchez, High-Performance Database Engineering
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