Comparative Performance Evaluation of Database Management Systems

摘要

The primary goal of this performance evaluation study is to gather information which will allow comparison of the performance (and resource requirements) of various database management systems for different applications. The study is motivated by the difficulty of assessing the impact of the various combinations of features and implementation techniques present in different systems on their performances and resource requirements. In particular, there is some concern that the Data Retrieval System (DRS) of Advanced Data Management which has received a preliminary recommendation from LBL may not be able to handle numeric and statistical operations well, since it stores all data as text. It is not within the scope of this study to make any value judgements on the importance of performance relative to other selection criteria. It is also not within the scope of this project to examine in any great detail the impact of specific database system design decisions on performance. While the major emphasis of this project was on the functional performances of each system for a given application, and the identification of significant differences between system performances, recognition of the rapidly changing nature of data management technology motivated a significant secondary objective. This was to establish a high level framework which would allow additional database management systems and new versions of the previously tested systems to be added to the pool of results with a minimum of time and effort. This required a balance between specificity and generality in the overall test design. (ERA citation 07:048920)