Published 5 times per year, the TPC Benchmark Status Report is a digest of the activities of the TPC and its technical subcommittees.

The TPC held a General Council meeting on December 6th, in Santa Ana, CA. On the OLTP front, the TPC-E Maintenance Subcommittee made editorial and clarifications to the TPC-E benchmark, resulting in Version 1.4.0, while the TPC-C Maintenance Subcommittee continued work on reconciling the list of TAB interpretations. With respect to decision support, the TPC-DS specification draft is going through the TPC's evaluation process. Finally, new definitions to enable the use of virtualization products are being proposed for TPC-App.

The TPC-C Maintenance Subcommittee continued work on reconciling the list of TAB interpretations currently classified as “in force” with the wording in the current revision of the TPC-C Specification.  The subcommittee will recommend wording additions and/or modifications to bring the specification in line with the TAB interpretations.  These wording changes will be included in a future revision of the TPC-C Specification.  

The TPC-H subcommittee did not convene at this meeting. The TPC-H subcommittee will continue to monitor the benchmarks, along with any TAB interpretations and rulings, for discussion and possible inclusion in future versions of the specifications.

The TPC-App subcommittee is considering changes to the definition of the term Operating System to take into account the existence of virtualization software products. A SYSTEM running multiple guest operating systems is considered to be a single system (not a cluster) for the purposes of this benchmark. The definition of SYSTEM was changed to accommodate virtualization and the term Virtualization Product was defined. These changes will allow the use of virtualization products for TPC-App publications.

The TPC-E benchmark was introduced in March 2007 and six results have been submitted to date.

The TPC-E Maintenance Subcommittee made editorial and clarification changes to the specification, and developed bug fixes for EGen. Most of the specification changes were clarifications that came in from the auditors as a result of their audit work on TPC-E results. A new revision of the TPC-E benchmark (v1.4.0) with these changes was approved and is available immediately, and becomes effective as of February 4, 2008. Prior results and Version 1.4.0 results are comparable. Prior results do not need to be upgraded to Version 1.4.0 results.

The TPC-DS Development Subcommittee concluded the process of reviewing and responding to all comments. The specification is now going through the TPC's process for evaluation, working towards final approval.

The Pricing Maintenance Subcommittee Developed a new revision of the specification that includes an appendix for helping to verify line item and discount pricing and an extensive list of procedures for various component substitutions, if they are allowed by the benchmark specifications. The General Council approved this specification (Version 1.3.0). It’s use is allowed immediately, and required as of February 4, 2008.

An article on How to Use Benchmarks When Evaluating New Servers has been published as a feature in the January issue of Enterprise Networks and Servers.

We welcome opportunities to present the benefits and status of TPC benchmarks: if you are interested in inviting someone from the TPC for a presentation, please contact Michael Majdalany (majdalany @ tpc.org)

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