How to benchmark a SQL database

To compare databases against each other, a benchmark like TPC-H is used.

At first, you have to download the TPC-H benchmark from tpc.org

Then you will adjust the makefile (copied from makefile.suite)

################
## CHANGE NAME OF ANSI COMPILER HERE
################
CC      = gcc
# Current values for DATABASE are: INFORMIX, DB2, TDAT (Teradata)
#                                  SQLSERVER, SYBASE, ORACLE, VECTORWISE
# Current values for MACHINE are:  ATT, DOS, HP, IBM, ICL, MVS, 
#                                  SGI, SUN, U2200, VMS, LINUX, WIN32 
# Current values for WORKLOAD are:  TPCH
DATABASE= ORACLE
MACHINE = LINUX
WORKLOAD = TPCH

After hitting make, you will run dbgen:

carli@launix-MS-7C51:~/projekte/memcp/TPC-H V3.0.1/dbgen$ ./dbgen -vf
TPC-H Population Generator (Version 3.0.0)
Copyright Transaction Processing Performance Council 1994 - 2010
Generating data for suppliers table/
Preloading text ... 100%
done.
Generating data for customers tabledone.
Generating data for orders/lineitem tablesdone.
Generating data for part/partsupplier tablesdone.
Generating data for nation tabledone.
Generating data for region tabledone.

Then create some test queries:

carli@launix-MS-7C51:~/projekte/memcp/TPC-H V3.0.1/dbgen$ DSS_QUERY=queries ./qgen > queries.sql

Now you use the following files:

• dss.ddl to create the tables
• *.tbl to import the tables into your database
• queries.sql to run the queries (and benchmark them)

That’s it for today. Before I can start benchmarking memcp, I will have to complete the SQL parser first.