Ingres VectorWise Database ‘Smashes’ Benchmark

A forthcoming version of Ingres‘ open source analytic database, VectorWise has smashed a TPC-H benchmarking record, beating it by an order of magnitude.

Ingres believes VectorWise will will increase the takeup of business intelligence and interactive reporting in businesses, by reducing the need for pricey software and hardware. The new record for the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s TPC-H benchmark, was at scale factor 100 running on a single HP ProLiant DL380, delivering 340 percent of the previous best record, while improving price/performance by 25 percent.

Benchmark Results

Based on the newly published TPC-H results, the VectorWise database apparently delivered 251,561 QphH@100GB (Query–per-hour performance metric) for 100 GB of data on a single HP ProLiant DL380 G7 system compared to the previous best of 73,975 QphH@100GB on an HP ProLiant DL380 G7 system.

The HP Proliant DL380 used for the benchmark was equipped with two Intel Xeon processor 5600 Series, and ran Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0. Price wise, the total three year system and software cost less than $100,000 (£62,000).

Ingres said that this means companies of all sizes can use fast interactive reporting and business intelligence, that was previously only available to companies with large IT budgets.

“We are thrilled with the announcement of this benchmark” Geoff Sheppard, Ingres VP of sales for NEMEA and SEMEA, told eWEEK Europe UK. “This is an external validation by TPC and shows its relevance for organisations where time is of the essence.”

“Many organisations are now recognising the importance of business analytics, and it is now boardroom agenda,”  Sheppard added.

He said that VectorWise removes barriers to entry for business analytics, and gives companies the ability to analyse data quickly, and to move analytical interaction as close as possible to the decision making process.

“We are naturally delighted to claim pole position in this industry-recognised benchmark for decision support”, said Terry Garnett, CEO of Ingres. “The sheer scale of the record means that companies of all sizes, across any vertical market, now have ability to run queries in minutes instead hours, delivering fast interactive reporting for decision making across the enterprise.  The 240 percent performance gain together with the 25 percent improvement in price performance could make VectorWise a very disruptive technology in many industries.”

According to Sheppard, pricing for VectorWise is made on a per core basis, and the database is available either as on a subscription basis or permanent basis. The cost is $10,000 (£6,180) per core, on a subscription basis.

It shluld be noted that this latest TPC-H benchmark applies only to the forthcoming version of VectorWise (version 1.5 – due out 31 March), and not the current 1.0 version, which was launched back in June 2010.

Ongoing Debate

Ingres has been promising great things for Vectorwise for at least 18 months now and last year hinted at how it could change the market. Presenting figures to back this up is a good next step, but the debate over the use of benchmarks has raged in the database industry for the last two decades.

Critics point out that benchmarks are often simply used as marketing tools without reflecting “real world scenarios”.

“Benchmarks are really for like-to-like comparisons, and TCP is an independent benchmark, and it is same for anyone else going through that process,” responded Sheppard when that point was put to him. “This figure represents an order of magnitude improvement. In comparison to the market over past ten years, it is significant and something we are really proud of,” he said.