Authors:
Anna Thanopoulou
1
;
Paulo Carreira
2
and
Helena Galhardas
2
Affiliations:
1
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
;
2
Technical University of Lisbon and INESC-ID, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Database Benchmarking, Database Performance Tuning, Decision Support.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Data Engineering
;
Databases and Data Security
;
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Large Scale Databases
;
Query Languages and Query Processing
Abstract:
Most medium-sized enterprises run their databases on inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware; still, they need quick answers to complex queries, like ad-hoc Decision Support System (DSS) ones. Thus, it is important that the chosen database system and its tuning be optimal for the specific database size and design. Such choice can be made in-house, based on tests with academic database benchmarks. This paper focuses on the TPC-H database benchmark that aims at measuring the performance of ad-hoc DSS queries. Since official TPC-H results feature large databases and run on high-end hardware, we attempt to assess whether the test is meaningfully downscalable and can be performed on off-the-shelf hardware. We present the benchmark and the steps that a non-expert must take to run the tests. In addition, we report our own benchmark tests, comparing an open-source and a commercial database server running on off-the-shelf hardware when varying parameters that affect the performance of DSS queries.