Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!cernvax!cgcha!whwb
From: whwb@cgcha.UUCP (Hans W. Barz)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Database Machines
Message-ID: <387@cgcha.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Jun-87 03:39:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: cgcha.387
Posted: Thu Jun 25 03:39:50 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 20:50:54 EDT
References: <2700@blia.BLI.COM> <851@rtech.UUCP> <2042@utah-gr.UUCP> <2891@zen.berkeley.edu>
Organization: CIBA-GEIGY AG, FO/WIRZ/WRZ, CH-4002 Basel, Switzerland
Lines: 33
Summary: Differences of Database Machines, Performance Issues of Distributed Databases

In article <2891@zen.berkeley.edu>, larry@ingres.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Rowe) writes:
> Several comments on the recent discussion of ``database machines.''
> 
>   THE OTHER LINES HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR READABILITY OF THIS NEWS


Usually I do not add news in this group, since I have the impression that
most of the partipicants are working only with small databases -- i.e.
< 300 MB

Some comments in a recent news on database machines -- see above -- did make
me to write these lines since these databases are usefull for bigger
applications:

1) The Teradata system -- name origins from TERABYTE -- is no competitive
   system to the Britton-Lee. The performance and price range is much above.
   
2) Distributed Database systems have usually a worse performance compared to non
   distributed systems. The only chance for a distributed database to gain
   performance is by partitioning a single job or query to multiple
   processors. This is only works currently for the Teradata.

3) The Teradata is not really a distributed database, since the communication
   in the Y-NET is synchronously while different processors are working
   asynchronously on the data -- this concept is not trivial and I cannot
   explain it completely in some lines.

4) I have done benchmarks on Teradata, DB2(3090), Britton-Lee(IDM) and 
   Tandem-SQL.  It is rather difficult to summarize that, but Teradata has the 
   best price/ performance rate and delivers usually the best performance for 
   the four above machines.

H.W.Barz, WRZ, CIBA-GEIGY, CH