Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!amdahl!rtech!davek
From: davek@rtech.rtech.com (Dave Kellogg)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Database benchmarks - debit/credit and TP1
Message-ID: <2632@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 30 Jan 89 15:24:32 GMT
References: <880@cantuar.UUCP> <820@altos86.UUCP>
Reply-To: davek@rtech.UUCP (Dave Kellogg)
Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
Lines: 43

In article <820@altos86.UUCP> jon@altos86.UUCP (Jonathan Ma) writes:
>In article <880@cantuar.UUCP>, paul@cantuar.UUCP (Paul  Ashton) writes:
>> I have been asked if I can get some information on database benchmarks
>> that vendors often publish results for.  The debit/credit and TP1
>> benchmarks are ones I am aware of, but have little information on.

>    Benchmark programs are generally available from the database vendors.
>	I got mine from both Informix (Credit/Debt) and Unify (TP1).  They
>	are very useful and easy to use too.  We are using TP1 to benchmark
>	our hardware and application software.

To overview this in a nutshell.

	*  TP1 has no published specification.  There are typically somewhat
	   severe differences in the way different vendors implement TP1.
	   Most vendors use the "DebitCredit" transaction as defined in 
	   the DebitCredit benchmark, but ignore many other parameters specific
	   in DebitCredit (e.g. database size).  In short, TP1 is usually some
	   degenerate form of DebitCredit.  How different people degenerate is
	   not always the same.

	*  DebitCredit has a published specification which was written by 
	   Jim Gray of Tandem along with 20+ "friends" (from many different 
	   firms and universites) as contributors and reviewers. The spec
	   was published in two places.  It, unless you have old copies of 
	   Datamation lying around, is probably most easily obtained by asking
	   Tandem.

	   1. "A Measure of Transaction Processing Power", Tandem Technical 
	       Report TR85.2.  February 1985, Tandem Computers

	   2. "A Measure of Transaction Processing Power", Datamation, Volume
	       31, Number 7, 1985


David Kellogg
davek@rtech.rtech.com



>
>	-Jon-		Jonathan Ma, Altos Computer Systems
>				UUCP: {pyramid,sun}!altos86!jon