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TPC Benchmark Status
March 2004
Overview

The TPC held a General Council meeting on February 5th in Honolulu, Hawaii. The main focus of the work was on refining existing benchmarks and laying the foundation for new benchmarks. On the OLTP front, work continues on the new TPC-E specification with a focus on putting in place baseline functionality. The TPC-C benchmark is being updated to include a Revision Date field. With respect to decision support, progress continues on the new DS benchmark metrics and schema. The TPC-H and TPC-R benchmarks are being updated to include the ISO currency codes. As for the transactional web e-Commerce benchmark, the TPC-W Version 2 draft specification was in public review through February 20th and work has begun on addressing the comments received. The Pricing Subcommittee reviewed and addressed comments submitted on the draft Pricing Specification.

 

Current Benchmarks
TPC-C

The TPC-C Maintenance Subcommittee began work on items for inclusion in the next release of the TPC-C Specification. The current work item is the addition of a Revision Date field to the Executive Summary. This new field will allow a result to maintain the original date of submission on the Executive Summary along with the date of the last revision.

 

TPC-H and R

The TPC-H/R subcommittees discussed the incorporation of a currency standard table into the TPC-H/R specifications. The specification will be updated to require the inclusion of the ISO 4217:2001 currency codes.

 

New Benchmarks
TPC-E (OLTP)

Over the past two months, the TPC-E subcommittee has continued its efforts in the development of a new OLTP benchmark. Code to be provided by the TPC to test sponsors continues to be developed. Recent focus has been on getting baseline functionality in place for loading the database. A new draft version of the benchmark specification has been approved. The work for the next draft of the specification is focused on clarification and refinement of the transaction profiles. Prototype benchmark kits are being developed, and the subcommittee is collecting and reviewing preliminary data.

Work moving forward will include further development of the source code to be provided by the TPC, benchmark specification development, and the collection and analysis of more prototype data.

 
TPC-DS

The TPC-DS subcommittee continued its work developing the TPC-DS specification, focusing on the metric, queries and schema.

Numerous discussions took place regarding the benchmark metric and schema. A weighted metric was proposed that emphasizes queries over data maintenance and load. This would make the metric more realistic. However, the group felt that defining weights is too difficult to accomplish and could possibly lead to a more fragile metric. A revised metric will be presented at the next meeting. Efforts were also made to simplify the schema in order to speed up benchmark development.

A large portion of the meeting focused on expanding the existing query base from 22 to 66. The group will continue this work with the remaining 14 queries that have been defined.

The subcommittees also met with the TPC-E subcommittee to discuss the TPC-DS ACID tests and 64-bit random number generator. Upon review, no flaws in the ACID tests were reported by the members of the TPC-E subcommittee.

 
TPC-W

TPC-W Version 2 is a web service benchmark consisting of transactions involving database interactions, durable message queue operations, and displaying ACID properties running against a commercial application server. The primary metrics are SIPS (Service Interactions Per Second), Price Performance which is, for example $/SIPS, and the system availability date.

The public review phase for TPC-W Version 2 closed on February 20th. The subcommittee began addressing the comments received thus far. The majority of comments were of an editorial nature. Several terms and definitions used throughout the specification were clarified and their use is now consistent. Minor changes in web service interaction requirements were made to better reflect the business model portrayed. Corrections to inconsistencies within the database schema were also made.

Two prototype efforts have thus far yielded three initial sets of prototype data (2 .NET, 1 Java). Additional prototype data is expected as time proceeds. Prototype performance is trending upward as the implementations evolve. The prototypes demonstrate the specified workload can be implemented using both Java and .NET.

The subcommittee will continue to address questions and comments received from the submission form. The subcommittee expects to have all comments addressed by the April meeting so that the final draft can be sent out for mail-ballot approval by the TPC.

 

Other TPC Activities
Public Relations Committee

The PR Committee continues its work on the campaign to promote the TPC and the TPC benchmarks to the industry. In response to the increasing publication of TPC results in currencies other than US dollars, the TPC web site has been enhanced to display results grouped by currency.

 
Pricing

The TPC formed a benchmark development subcommittee for the development of a pricing specification that can be applied to all TPC benchmarks. A draft specification was submitted. The public review phase for the draft pricing specification closed on February 29th.

The specification does not substantially change what is priced, but the requirements for reporting and ordering are enhanced and strengthened, allowing improved verifiability of pricing. If approved, the pricing specification will be referenced by all existing and future TPC specifications for a consistent methodology.

 
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