TPC-D benchmarks (was Re: Sybase MPP shows excellent scalability to 128 CPUs

grimes@access2.digex.net (Seth Grimes) writes: >nraden@aol.com (NRaden) writes: >>I don't think TPC results are even relevant. What do they have to do with >>decision support, which is clearly the target market? >What is your opinion of TPC-D, which is supposedly designed to test >complex, decision-support-like queries? I haven't seen the spec or any >published benchmarks. Is it good for DSS and are vendors adopting it? I was informed that the TPC-D specs are on http://www.tpc.org/bench.descrip.html but that no vendors have yet published results. I'm sure that all the major SQL database vendors are running the benchmarks but have any committed to publishing results? The benchmark specifies that "the TPC-D database must be implemented using a commercially available database management system (DBMS), and the queries executed via an interface using dynamic SQL." "TPC Benchmark D is comprised of a set of business queries designed to exercise system functionalities in a manner representative of complex business analysis applications. These queries have been given a realistic context, portraying the activity of a wholesale supplier to help the reader relate intuitively to the components of the benchmark." It's not acceptable to the TPC to translate the queries into proprietary languages and the data structures into non-relational hypercubes but some vendors in the decision-support arena support only proprietary languages and non-relational structures. Do any of them plan to run the benchmark anyway? Even if unaudited, the results could substantiate claims that a multidimensional database structure is preferable for DSS work to a relational structure. I understand that the first stage of the OLAP Council's API has been released. What about their proposed benchmarks, which would presumably cover a lot of the same ground as TCP-D? Seth -- Seth Grimes -- grimes@access.digex.net -- http://www.access.digex.net/~grimes