WALTHAM, Mass. (Nov. 11, 2003) — Winter Corporation today announced the award winners in the 2003 Winter TopTen Program, a survey of the world’s largest databases.

The Winter TopTen Program identifies the world's leading database implementations based on database size, most rows/records and highest workload achieved. The program recognizes the database practitioners whose accomplishments are advancing the boundaries of database size and power. It also documents the products, platforms and architectures that are operating successfully at the frontiers of database scalability.

Owners and managers of large databases completed a brief survey on database metrics, software/hardware environment and projected growth rates. Surveys were sorted by usage and platform. As part of the survey process, respondents validated their submissions by running scripts developed by their database vendor and Winter Corp. The 2003 program received 141 validated, qualified surveys from 27 countries.

The 2003 TopTen Program was the fifth global survey campaign run by Winter Corp. The program introduced a new metric, database size based on normalized data volume. The new metric resulted from improvements in compression techniques, which has allowed database management systems to handle user data volumes that exceed measured database size.

The Winter Corp. database size metric represents actual data only. The metric includes user data, summaries, aggregates and indexes, and excludes copies of data and free space. As a result, Winter Corp. research findings may be smaller than what are generally reported by the media. However, they are more representative of authentic database size and more valuable for analysis and comparison.

The TopTen Program is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), Sybase Inc. (NYSE: SY), and Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR). Sponsorship does not sanction influence on the TopTen Program in any way.

Among decision support participants, France Telecom, 29.2 TB of data, was awarded two Grand Prize (first place) awards for Database Size, in the All Environments and Unix Only categories. The implementation comprises Oracle database management system, a Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC Superdome server and Hewlett Packard StorageWorks XP512. Other top awards for Database Size were awarded to AT&T and SBC Communications.

“Winning Winter Corporation TopTen awards provided SBC with external validation and exposure within the industry and technical community,” said Rolf Hanusa, Principal Technical Architect of SBC’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). “Using the talents of our dedicated IT Data Warehouse staff, DWH best practices, quality metrics, and sound business practices, SBC’s EDW provides our business clients with a competitive advantage even in these difficult times.”  SBC's EDW employs Teradata Database, NCR 5xxx Servers and NCR Enterprise Storage solutions.

The Grand Prize for Database Size, Windows platforms, was awarded to comScore Networks, Inc., 8.9 TB. The implementation employs Sybase IQ database management system, Dell servers and EMC storage systems. Grand Prizes for database size, based on the volume of normalized data, for decision support databases went to AT&T for All Environments and Unix Only platforms.

Grand Prizes for Most Rows/Records, decision support databases, was given to AT&T, in All Environments and Unix Only, 496 billion rows. comScore Networks, Inc. received the Grand Prize for Most Rows/Records for Windows systems.

Among the leading transaction processing systems, Land Registry, 18.3 TB of data, was awarded the Grand Prize for Database Size, All Environments. Land Registry employs the IBM’s DB2 UDB database management software, IBM z990 servers, and IBM and Hitachi storage systems.

Ian Johnson, Director of Information Systems for Land Registry, said, “I am delighted that we have been awarded a Grand Prize by the Winter Corporation. We knew that the Register was a large database, but to be identified as the world’s largest OLTP database underlines the important role that we play in guaranteeing property and land ownership in England and Wales. Furthermore it gives recognition to the superb skills and professionalism of our IT staff.”

Among Unix entrants, the United States Patent and Trademark Office secured Grand Prizes for database size, while Verizon Communications reported the largest transaction processing implementation on Windows. Grand Prizes for Most Rows/Records, transaction processing, went to United Parcel Service, All Environments, 41 billion rows. Gevity-HR, Inc., Unix Only, and Verizon Communications, Windows systems, also earned Grand Prizes for Most Rows/Records.

Managers of large databases, industry experts and providers of high-end database software and hardware products regard database scalability as a key issue. They utilize Winter Corp. program results to understand and meet the challenges of large-scale database operations. Winter Corp. research findings are also presented at industry conferences and frequently cited by industry experts in data warehousing, data management and related fields.

"These leading implementations are remarkable engineering and management accomplishments that bring extraordinary business value to their enterprises. We have the greatest admiration for the people who create and support them," said Richard Winter, president of Winter Corp. “We also salute the industry vendors whose ability to meet unprecedented technical requirements is at the heart of these award-winning solutions. As the largest commercial systems approach 100 terabytes of data, Winter Corp. will continue to identify and honor the database practitioners and vendors who continually push the envelope of database size and power.”

Winter Corp. will soon announce the Grand Prize winners for Workload for transaction processing (highest transactions per second) and decision support (most concurrent, inflight queries) systems.