One of the most widely recognized and often quoted database benchmarks is the TPC-C. For over 14 years, the TPC-C has been the industry standard OLTP test; however, it’s very clearly showing its advanced age. The TPC-C does not adequately mimic today’s real-world database workloads, nor does it properly stress the capabilities of today’s hardware and database engines. As such, the TPC-C is quickly loosing favor!
But not to worry, as a brand new OLTP database benchmark arrived in 2007. The TPC-E attempts to resolve all the known shortcomings of the TPC-C – and does so quite nicely. In fact the TPC.org defines the TPCE-E as follows:
The TPC-E benchmark simulates the OLTP workload of a brokerage firm. The focus of the benchmark is the central database that executes transactions related to the firm’s customer accounts. Although the underlying business model of TPC-E is a brokerage firm, the database schema, data population, transactions, and implementation rules have been designed to be broadly representative of modern OLTP systems.
Below is my rendition of the TPC-E data model HTML report and diagram produced by Quest’s Toad Data Modeler. Since the data model is not presented in the official TPC-E design specification document (www.tpc.org/tpce/spec/TPCE-v1.2.0.pdf), it’s definitely worth a look see …
TPC-E Data Model
In future white papers, demos, articles and blogs – I’ll be using the TPC-E exclusively.