Database: Progress Software Database Breaks 100,000 Transactions Per Minute Barrier - version 8.3 of the Progress RDBMS - Product Development

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Nov 23, 1998

Progress Software Corporation, a leading supplier of application servers, development tools, database technology and support services for business applications, Monday announced a new benchmark in peak database performance. Benchmarks to measure peak and sustained transaction rates generated a peak workload of 159,000 tpmATM and a sustained rate of 125,700 tpmATM.

These results establish a new performance milestone for the Progress RDBMS on a single machine and a 60 percent improvement in peak database performance over previous generation S70 hardware. The results were achieved testing the

Progress V8.3 on the newest model of IBM's RS/6000 S70 server line, "Blackbird." Testing was conducted at IBM's Solution Partnership Center in Waltham, Mass.

The Solution Partnership Center configured the benchmark platform using IBM's next-generation RS/6000 S70 Advanced Server with new 64-bit 262 MHz RS64 II processors. The Progress RDBMS running on the new processors was able to improve peak transaction rates by 63 percent and sustained transaction rates by 51 percent over those results on the "Raven," IBM's previous generation CPU technology. At the peak transaction rate, disks were more than 95 percent busy, suggesting a higher transaction rate would be possible with more spindles. The system was constructed using 12 processors with 8GB of main memory. The benchmark used 96GB of disk storage with the actual database residing on 16 high speed SSA disk spindles.

"The high performance of the Progress V8.3 database further substantiates Progress Software's position as the leading vendor in the expanding U.S. embedded database market, as found in the recent Dataquest report," said Clark French, director and general manager of the database product unit at Progress Software. "These results, along with other recent benchmarks, underscore the confidence our customers have when they embed the Progress RDBMS in their applications."

At the maximum sustained transaction rate, 99.9 percent of transactions were completed in less than 0.1 second and all transactions in less than 1 second. The ATM benchmark used simulates the third tier (database component) of an update-intensive OLTP application with reliability requirements necessary for financial transactions -- it is a classic OLTP workload most similar to the industry standard TPC-C benchmark. The ATM benchmark is written completely in the Progress 4GL and can be setup and run in its simplest form in less than a day.

Progress Software Corporation is a worldwide supplier of application development tools, database technology and support services, with over 1,200 employees in more than 50 offices across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Professional developers use Progress Software solutions, including the Apptivity, WebSpeed, ProtoSpeed and Progress products, to build, deploy and maintain applications across Internet, client/server and host/terminal computing environments. Progress Software's products are used by customers and ISVs, who in turn generated more than $1.5 billion in applications sales in 1997. FMI: http://www.progress.com or in the U.S. call 1-800-477-6473.