WALTHAM, Mass. (Feb. 11, 2004) — Winter Corporation announced the final award winners in the Winter 2003 TopTen Program, an assessment of the world’s largest and most heavily used databases.

The TopTen Program presents the leading database implementations measured by size, rows/records and workload. The campaign honors those who have developed or are managing the leading databases and thus redefining the borders of database size and power. The program presents the products, platforms and architectures at the frontier of database scalability.

To participate in the program, owners and managers of large databases complete a short survey on database metrics, software and hardware environment, and projected size and workload growth rates. Categories are defined based on usage and operating system platform. Participants are required to validate their submissions by running scripts developed by their database vendor and Winter Corp. or to provide system documentation that supports the metrics they reported.

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.

The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, 51,448 transactions per second (tps), achieved the highest workload figure, All Environments, for transaction processing systems. The implementation uses the CA’s Advantage CA-Datacom database management system, an IBM eServer zSeries system and Hitachi storage devices. Customs also captured the top position in the 2001 survey program, when it reported a rate of 26,655 tps.

Among Unix-only entrants, the Grand Prize for workload went to ICICI Bank Ltd., which achieved 450 tps. ICICI employs the Oracle database management system, Sun Fire servers and HP StorageWorks disk arrays.

The 2003 TopTen Program signified a major industry change in platform choices for heavily used systems. For the first time, Winter Corp. announced workload TopTen winners for Windows-based systems. Internet Auction Co., Ltd. earned the Grand Prize for completing 3,634 tps. The implementation utilizes Microsoft SQL Server database management system, Unisys ES7000 Servers and EMC CLARiiON FC storage systems.

Among Decision Support databases, the Grand Prize for highest workload, All Environments, was awarded to Experian Marketing Services, 887 concurrent, inflight queries. Experian uses the Oracle database management system, Sun Fire servers and EMC Symmetrix DMX storage arrays. Experian also captured the Grand Prize for highest workload among Unix-only entrants.

Winter Corp. announced a repeat winner for workload among Windows-based decision support systems. Stratapult Enterprises, Inc. earned the top position by completing 167 concurrent, inflight queries. This represents a 50% jump in workload since 2001, when the company, then known as Inmar Technology Solutions, achieved 100 concurrent queries. Stratapult is a Microsoft SQL Server implementation, supported by an IBM eServer xSeries and Hitachi Freedom storage solutions.

The TopTen Program initiated a new category in 2003 specifically for hybrid databases. Typically, these systems are data archives that store data primarily on tape and secondarily on disk. Though their architecture and use differ from conventional database implementations, they have significantly expanded the boundaries of database scalability.

The Grand Prize for hybrid systems goes to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) for its 828 TB database. The SLAC database is implemented on Objectivity database management system, using Sun Fire servers and Sun StorEdge storage arrays.

The 2003 Program was the also first in which Winter Corp. announced award winners for volume of normalized data, which is the amount of data being managed by the DBMS.  Grand Prizes for normalized data volume, All Environments and Unix Only, were awarded to AT&T Research, for its 94.3 TB database.  The AT&T implementation uses AT&T’s own Daytona database management software, Sun Fire E10000 servers and Sun StorEdge storage systems.

“The results of this TopTen Program impress us once again with the substantial jump in workload of the past two years,” said Richard Winter, president of Winter Corporation. “As business requirements and user demands rise, large database environments are required to scale to new performance levels. The TopTen Program bring much-deserved credit to those successfully managing these challenging implementations and to the DBMS and hardware-software platform vendors whose products comprise these environments.”

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.