For more information contact:
TPC
Kim Shanley
Phone: 408-295-8894
Email: shanley@tpc.org
San Jose, California - August 3, 1998 - The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) today announced it will release a new version of its TPC-D decision support benchmark in November of this year. Market researchers, press, and the public are invited to review the proposed benchmark changes and submit comments. Those interested should visit the TPC web site at: http://www.tpc.org.
"The principal goals of Version 2.0 are to increase the complexity of the TPC-D workload to keep pace with the growing power of computer systems and database software and to modify the execution rules to keep TPC-D relevant to the increasingly complex nature of decision support, " said Kim Shanley, the TPC's Chief Operating Officer.
Continued Shanley, "First, the number of queries--the business questions asked of a decision support system--has been increased by 30 percent, adding significantly to the complexity of the workload. In addition, Version 2.0 requires that all those who run the benchmark must run multiple concurrent streams of the queries, which more realistically simulates multiple users asking questions of a decision support system."
Other Proposed Version 2.0 Changes (from Version 1.X)
The TPC welcomes and will carefully consider comments from any interested party on the proposed benchmark revision before TPC-D Version 2 is finalized. The draft benchmark specification and instructions for comment submission are available from the TPC web site at: http://www.tpc.org
TPC-D Version 1.0, announced in the spring of 1995, is a decision support workload based on a data warehouse model. Within this model, the database schema is organized in a so-called "normalized" fashion. This organization, which is typical of OLTP databases, is easy to update and makes the database easier to maintain in the face of changing requirements. Since the user population within a data warehouse environment tends to be large and diverse, the ad-hoc queries submitted against the database are likely to reflect widely varying business questions emphasizing differing quantities and levels of detail. The queries often access and join many tables, and require a complex mix of database functionality.
TPC-D Version 2 makes virtually no changes to the original data warehouse schema. For the next major revision of the benchmark (Version 3), the TPC-D technical development subcommittee plans to substantially expand the warehouse schema to include multiple subject areas.
In addition, the subcommittee is committing to incorporating a new data mart workload into the benchmark. Data marts are characterized by a different type of database organization ("star" or "snowflake") that is well suited to a more limited class of queries representing particular types of business questions about a smaller subject area. Data marts are typically extracted or refreshed from processed warehouse or OLTP data and are not updated while being queried. For Version 3, the subcommittee envisions one or more data mart schemas derived from the data warehouse schema.
"The industry needs a level playing field to objectively evaluate the performance of both data warehouse and data mart solutions," said Susanne Englert, Chair of the TPC-D Subcommittee. "The development of Version 3.0 will be a formidable technical task, and we would like to solicit the participation of new members experienced in the data mart arena. Those interested should contact the TPC via the TPC web site." (http://www.tpc.org)
The TPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define transaction processing and database benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry. The TPC was established in August 1988 by eight leading software and hardware companies, and now has 41 members from North America, Asia, Australia, and Europe.
The TPC members are: Acer, Adaptec, BEA Systems, Bull, Compaq, Computer Associates, Data General, debis Systemhaus, Dell Computers, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), EMC, Fujitsu/ICL, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, IDEAS International, Informix, Intel, Intergraph, InterWorld, ITOM International, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mylex, NCR, NEC, Netscape Communictions, Oki Electric, Oracle, Sarion Systems Research, SCO, Sequent, Siemens Nixdorf, Silicon Graphics, Stratus, Sun Microsystems, Sybase,Toshiba, Unisys, and White Cross Systems.