Carolyn Turbyfill

Performance of complex queries in Main Memory Database Systems

Memory residence can buy both functionality and performance for a database management system. In this paper, we present a description and a benchmark of an experimental implementation of a Main Memory Database System (MMDBS) that was designed to support complex interactive queries. We describe and evaluate the main memory database structures and query processing algorithms implemented in this prototype. Our measurements and analysis, focused on aggregates and joins, include both memory requirements and response time, since there is a clear trade-off between space and time in the design of a MMDBS. In contrast to conventional Disk-based Database Systems (DDBSs), we found that an MMDBS can efficiently execute complex relational queries. We identify strategies that exploit memory residence effectively. We also identified a number of performance problems related to query optimization in main memory and memory management for MMDBSs.

AS/sup 3/AP-a comparative relational database benchmark

The authors describe and motivate the design of a scalable and portable benchmark for database systems, the AS/sup 3/AP benchmark (Ansi SQL Standard Scalable and Portable). The benchmark is designed to provide meaningful measures of database processing power, to be portable between different architectures, and to be scalable to facilitate comparisons between systems with different capabilities. The authors introduce a performance metric, namely, the equivalent database ratio, to be used in comparing systems.<<ETX>>