Re: Sybase 11 TPCC on DEC (your comments please)

The Right Reverend Colin James III (cjames_at_melchizedek.cec-services.com) wrote:
: gtravis_at_richmond.infi.net (Glenn Travis) posted with deletions:
:
: | Sybase Leapfrogs Competition; Achieves 'Best On Platform' With SQL Server11
 

: | Source: PR Newswire
: |
: | EMERYVILLE, Calif., Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ via NewsPage -- Sybase, Inc.
: | (Nasdaq: SYBS), The Enterprise Client/Server Company(TM), today announced
: | that Sybase(R) SQL Server(TM) 11 achieved the industry's best TPC-C
: | benchmark results ever recorded on the 300 megahertz Digital AlphaServer
: | 8400. The Sybase/Digital benchmark achieved 11,014 transactions per minute
: | (tpmC) at a price/performance of $222 per tpmC with Sybase SQL Server 11 --
: | 17 percent faster and 32 percent less expensive than Oracle's best
: | performance result utilizing the same Digital Alpha chip.
:
: The result seems specious as the TPC-C benchmark is not described.

Then you need to get out more. TPC benchmarks have been "described" by the Transaction Processing Council for some time now. TPC-C, for example, evaluates systems and software under an OLTP worload. You would not want to run one of these benchmarks - costs mucho bucks and even more time. That's why hardware manufacturers typically run these tests, not end users. What's more, the results must be audited by an independent agency to ensure compliance with the TPC specs.

: By contrast, my "primitive" load tests on hardly an optimized object
: database in compiled BASIC, not in the target development language of
: Eiffel, produced this result on the following test on a 586-133, 32
: MB, on one IDE hard disk, no buffer, no cache (hardly a $40,000 +
: Alpha box).

< snip >

If you owned a company and were looking to purchase a large database system, would you base your decision entirely upon your benchmark? Granted, you may not wish to base it on TPC-C alone but it comes much closer to real-world applications than your "primitive" load test. You may also wish to see how much the salesman is willing to bribe. :-)

:
: The Sybase results do not impress this writer.
:

Too bad. They're pretty respectable numbers.

  Chris

-- 
Chris Huey                                           Tactix ReEngineering, Inc.
cah_at_tactix.com                                            Voice: (503) 684-3582

         Just another hitch-hiker on the Information Super-highway.