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TPC Benchmark Status
April 2005
Overview

The TPC held a General Council meeting on February 17th in Austin, TX. The main focus of the work was on refining existing benchmarks and laying the foundation for new benchmarks. Several of the committees (TPC-C, TPC-H) reviewed the potential impact of the proposed Pricing Specification on their benchmarks. On the OLTP front, the TPC-E specification continues its forward progress with work on initial database sizing, scale factor, runtime I/O characteristics, and isolation levels. With respect to decision support, development of the DS benchmark continues in the areas of queries, specification, data maintenance and prototyping. As for the transactional web e-Commerce benchmark, the TPC-App 1.0 was approved by the TPC General Council. The Pricing Specification was approved by the General Council.

 

Current Benchmarks
TPC-C

The TPC-C Maintenance subcommittee addressed a potential inconsistency in the requirements for the benchmark consistency tests.  Wording was proposed and accepted to clarify the requirement.  The subcommittee also began reviewing the changes required to reconcile the TPC Pricing Specification with the TPC-C Benchmark specification.  This review will continue over the next two months and a reconciled TPC-C specification will be presented to the TPC in April 2005.

 
TPC-H

The subcommittee discussed incorporation of the Pricing Specification into the specification.

 

New Benchmarks
TPC-E (OLTP)

Over the past month, the TPC-E subcommittee has continued its efforts in the development of a new OLTP benchmark. During this time a new draft of the specification has been approved. In addition, a new version of the TPC provided code has been released to subcommittee members.

Prototyping work continues. Initial database sizing is being evaluated; criteria for establishing the scale factor are being explored; runtime I/O characteristics are being studied; and isolation levels for the various transactions have been preliminarily set.

Moving forward, prototyping will continue in the areas mentioned above. Additionally, work has already begun on the next draft of the specification.

 
TPC-DS

The subcommittee is finishing its work on developing TPC-DS in the areas of queries, specification, data maintenance and prototyping.  There are currently 90+ queries defined.  Out of the 50 base templates (ubertemplates) the group has defined 42.  Specific members are tasked to present the remaining base templates and variants within the next 3 weeks.  This will bring the total number of queries (templates) to 150. 

The focus of this meeting was an in depth review of the specification.  Until the next meeting open areas will be finished and editorial work will be carried out.  The largest open parts are the metric and execution rules.  A procedure has been defined to accept new wording proposals before the next face-to-face meeting.  Prototype (IO and CPU utilization) data was presented for most queries in a multi-user runs, similar to the intended benchmark run.  More prototype data will be gathered to demonstrate the impact of running all queries in the presence of data maintenance operations on software and hardware.  

 
TPC-App (TPC-W)

The TPC-App 1.0 was approved by the TPC membership.  Results may be submitted against the benchmark as of February 17.

The subcommittee created a robust TPC-App auditor certification exam.  Two auditors, Lorna Livingtree and Francois Raab were certified for TPC-App.

Additionally the subcommittee worked on a few clarifications to the specification. The required isolation levels for the Web Service Interactions has been clarified to require isolation level 2 for all interactions.  XML serialization restrictions with regards to implementations containing only one SYSTEM have been clarified as well. 

The definition and use of the term ‘caching’ has been clarified to correctly refer to the actions of caching and the cache object itself. Clarifications regarding the boundary values on various data range requirements throughout the specification have been made. Finally, database delimiters permitting retrieval of data from the Database System were accidentally removed in a portion of the Shipping Process, and have been re-inserted.  The subcommittee has a few outstanding clarifications related to the above issues, and will likely bring forward a third tier revision (TPC-App 1.0.01) at the next General Council meeting.

 

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. An article highlighting the TPC's efforts in maintaining the relevance and integrity of its benchmarks appeared in Storage Networking World Online.

Presentations for TPC speakers have been prepared, reviewed, and are in final draft. The prototype of a new customized information system for subscribers of TPC lists and reports continues its tests.

 
Pricing

The TPC has concluded voting for the TPC Pricing Specification and it was approved by the membership. The TPC Pricing Specification becomes effective at least by August 31, 2005 for all TPC benchmarks, and earlier for any benchmark that passes a minor revision that recognizes the TPC Pricing specification.

This specification can be applied to all TPC benchmarks. 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. All benchmark results that are currently valid under existing specifications will continue to be valid under the new pricing rules.
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