Oracle and Sun Are Faster than IBM: Proof Now Available

Oracle and Sun SPARC SOLARIS World Record TPC-4 Performance Beats IBM's Best Result on DB2 with Power 595 Server.


Oracle and Sun Publish First World Record TPC-C Benchmark using Flash Technology.

San Francisco, Calif. – October 11, 2009, Oracle announced a new world record TPC-C benchmark result for Oracle® Database 11g running on Sun SPARC® servers with CMT technology and the Sun Solaris Operating System (1). This result proves that the Oracle-Sun combination runs faster than IBM DB2 running on IBM’s flagship Power 595(2).

The Oracle-Sun benchmark used an innovative combination of Sun’s fast CMT servers to power the database, along with Sun’s new flash technology to speed I/O.

Oracle Real Application Clusters allowed Sun and Oracle to scale performance on a 12-Node Sun SPARC® Enterprise T5440 cluster. Oracle Real Application Clusters is in production use at thousands of customers, enabling transparent scaling of real-world business applications.

With this benchmark, Oracle and Sun become the first vendors to achieve world record TPC-C performance results using Flash Storage technology. Using the Sun™ Storage F5100 Flash Array, Oracle and Sun were able to set the world record using eight times less hardware than IBM used for its largest benchmark (3).

The Oracle-Sun configuration consumed four times less energy than the IBM configuration even though it ran 26 percent faster.

The Oracle-Sun benchmark demonstrated 16 times better transaction response times than the IBM benchmark(4).

Oracle Database 11g running on the Solaris™ 10 Operating System achieved a record-breaking 7.7 million tpmC at $2.34/tpmC.

Oracle is now the TPC-C world record holder in both major categories – performance(1) and price/performance(5).

Sun Oracle Database Machine: The First OLTP Database Machine

Introducing version 2 of the world's fastest database machine: The Sun Oracle Database Machine. The new database machine goes beyond data warehousing to also deliver extreme performance and scalability for online transaction processing applications (OLTP).

Extreme Performance

The Sun Oracle Database Machine combines industry-standard hardware components and FlashFire technology from Sun, Oracle Database 11g Release 2, and Oracle Exadata Storage Server Software to create a faster, more versatile database machine. "Exadata V2 is twice as fast as Exadata V1 for data warehousing, and it's the only database machine that runs OLTP applications," says Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. "Oracle Exadata V2 runs virtually all database applications much faster and less expensively than any other computer in the world."

The Sun Oracle Database Machine is the world's fastest for any type of database workload, and the only database machine that runs transaction processing applications. It is a complete package of software, servers, storage and networking for all data management, including data warehousing, transaction processing and consolidated mixed application workloads. The Sun Oracle Database Machine includes Sun's new FlashFire technology to cache 'hot' data for dramatically improved transaction response times and throughput. With the Sun Oracle Database Machine, customers can consolidate all their database applications, store up to ten times more data, search data up to ten times faster, and make faster business decisions in real time without making changes to applications.

	BENEFITS
	Extreme Performance for Data Warehouses—Improves both query performance and concurrency by offloading intensive query processing and data mining scoring from database servers and bringing it closer to the data. Extreme Performance for OLTP Applications—Addresses the disk random I/O bottleneck problem by transparently moving hot data to Sun FlashFire. You get ten times faster I/O response time and use ten times fewer disks for business applications from Oracle as well as third-party providers. Extreme Performance for Mixed Workloads—Allows you to consolidate data warehousing, transaction processing, and mixed workloads on a massively parallel server grid and eliminate the cost of third-party specialty hardware, security, and management solutions.

Oracle vs SQL Server

Platform dependency

SQL Server is only operable on the Windows platform, a major limitation for it to be an enterprise solution. Oracle is available on multiple platforms such as Windows, all flavors of Unix from vendors such as IBM, Sun, Digital, HP, Sequent, etc. and VAX-VMS, as well as MVS. The multi-platform nature of Oracle makes it a true enterprise solution

Locking and concurrency

SQL Server has no multi-version consistency model, which means that "writers block readers and readers block writers" to ensure data integrity. In contrast, with Oracle, the rule is "readers don't block writers and writers don't block readers." This is possible without compromising data integrity because Oracle will dynamically re-create a read-consistent image for a reader of any requested data that has been changed but not yet committed. In other words, the reader will see the data as it was before the writer began changing it (until the writer commits). SQL Server's locking scheme is much simpler (less mature) and will result in a lot of delays/waits in a heavy OLTP environment.

Also, SQL Server will escalate row locks to page level locks when too many rows on a page are locked. This locks rows which are uninvolved in any updates for no good reason.

Performance and tuning

Object types

Here are some object types missing in SQL Server that exist in Oracle.

PL/SQL versus T-SQL

Clustering technology

In clustering technology, Oracle is light years ahead, since SQL Server has nothing like Oracle Parallel Server/RAC -- two instances acting on the same data in active-active configurations. And with the new version of Parallel Server in Oracle 9i, renamed as the Oracle Real Application Clusters, there is diskless contention

Other Major Differences:

• In SQL Server, the DBA has no "real" control over sorting and cache memory allocation. The memory allocation is decided only globally in the server properties memory folder, and that applies for ALL memory and not CACHING, SORTING, etc
• In SQL Server, no range partitioning of large tables and indexes. In Oracle, a large 100 GB table can be seamlessly partitioned at the database level into range partitions. For example, an invoice table can be partitioned into monthly partitions. Such partitioned tables and partitioned indexes give performance and maintenance benefits and are transparent to the application.
• There is no partitioning, no bitmap indexes, no reverse key indexes, no function-based indexes, no star query optimization in SQL Server.
  

Oracle Buys Sun

Database giant Oracle announced Monday(20th April 2009) that it will buy Sun Microsystems for $9.50 per share—roughly $7.4 billion. The two companies reached an agreement after an unsuccessful bid by IBM fell short at $9.40 per share. Oracle has significantly expanded its reach over the past decade through a series of major acquisitions  which include PeopleSoft, Hyperion, Siebel, and BEA. The addition of Sun to Oracle's roster will have far-reaching implications and a profound impact on the technology industry.

Oracle President Safra Catz said in a statement:

We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined.