In a new report, the Standish Group claims that Oracle Systems Corp and other suppliers have conspired to run the TPC-A Benchmark with results which are, in our opinion, seriously misleading. The report deals with recently audited TPC-A and TPC-B benchmark results offered by IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Digital Equipment Corp and others using Oracle7 with the discrete transaction option. It says Oracle7 implements a poorly documented, special transaction model option known as the discrete transaction. Discrete transactions bypass many of the integrity features and general functionality of Oracle7 and significantly cuts the processing path length of the transaction. The integrity features remaining in the discrete transaction are those just sufficient to execute the TPC-A benchmark test – a notoriously undemanding test, according to the group. It says this limited functionality option could be used by very few, if any, users developing production applications. This being the case, the Standish Group believes that the discrete transaction option was implemented in Oracle7 solely for the purpose of running the TPC-A benchmark as efficiently as possible.
