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1998 Grand Prize Winners
Winter Corporation Announces
World's Largest Known Commercial Databases
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: John Donnelly 508.620.4712
john.donnelly@fi5thbusiness.com
Fourth Annual VLDB Research Reveals
World's Leading Transaction Processing
and Decision Support Systems
Beverly Hills, CA (March 4, 1998) Winter Corporation, a consulting and research firm specializing in large database technology, announced the world’s largest known commercial databases at The VLDB Summit in Beverly Hills, California. Winter Corporation awarded 17 ‘Grand Prizes’ in its worldwide VLDB Survey Program, an annual research examination of the trends and directions of large database technology. Research findings from the program assist VLDB practitioners in making critical business decisions, enabling them to raise organizational productivity, manage risk and reach strategic objectives. The research also provides insights to VLDB-related vendors who seek to better understand the requirements and challenges of their customers.
Participants in the Winter VLDB Survey Program hail from businesses integral to everyday life experiences. Member organizations, for example, develop Medicare plans, process orders for electronics products, deliver packages, determine when store shelves need to be restocked, and maintain voter registration information.
Winners in the 1998 program were announced by Richard Winter, President of Winter Corporation, who directs the VLDB Research Program, and Kathy Auerbach, Research Program Manager. "These massive databases are among the great information structures of our era. They touch the lives of millions of people every day. Those who create and manage these databases deserve to be honored in the same way we honor those who design our great bridges, buildings and cities."
As in the past, Winter Corporation’s partner in executing the VLDB Survey Program was Database Programming and Design magazine. David Stodder, editor-in-chief of the publication and conference chair of The VLDB Summit, stated that an upcoming issue of the magazine would contain a feature article about the survey winners and the research findings.
The 1998 program employed three metrics to identify the leading installations:
- Most data: includes user data, summaries, aggregates and indexes, and excludes freespace and redundancy. In recent months, stories in the press have reported databases whose sizes far exceed the figures in the Winter VLDB Survey program. These statistics, however, contain disk space allotted to freespace and redundancy. In contrast, the Winter survey program compares databases strictly on the size of usable database components.
- Most rows, records or objects.
- Peak online activity: for OLTP systems, the peak number of transactions per second; for decision support systems, the peak number of concurrent, online, in-flight queries, reports and updates.
Separate awards were given for decision support and transaction processing systems, and Unix environments were differentiated from traditional operating platforms. The research also tracked the growth of federated databases, defined as databases that are implemented on multiple autonomously operating database engines but which present a single, integrated image of the database to users and applications. Because federated systems differ significantly from conventional databases, in instances where the Grand Prize winner was a federated system, Winter Corporation also announced a non-federated Grand Prize winner.
The Grand Prize winners in the 1998 VLDB Survey Program are:
Sears, Roebuck and Co., Hoffman Estates, Illinois, outpaced all systems in two categories. This centralized decision support system led the field in database size in all environments and in Unix environments only. Counting the disk used for freespace and redundancy, the Sears database approaches the 10-terabyte mark. The system contains 4.63 terabytes and is implemented in the NCR Teradata DBMS on a NCR WorldMark 5100M system. Storage is provided by EMC.
JC Penney, Plano, Texas, was presented with double Grand Prize awards for peak online activity in a decision support system. JC Penney outdistanced the competition in Unix-only as well as in all operating environments. This customer-centric data warehouse performs a mixed workload of queries and data maintenance processes that peaks at 784 concurrent in-flight operations. The system employs NCR’s Teradata DBMS and is hosted on an NCR WorldMark 5100M system. EMC supplies storage devices for the system.
TELSTRA, a telecommunications company based in Melbourne, Australia, attained two Grand Prizes for its centralized OLTP database. The customer billing system was recognized for most data and most rows in any environment. The TELSTRA installation contains 51 billion rows and 4.2 TB of data. The main component of the DBMS is IBM DB2, on a cluster of Hitachi Data Systems Skyline and IBM S/390 systems. Hitachi, along with IBM and EMC, provides storage devices for TELSTRA.
Roadway Express, Akron, Ohio received a Grand Prize award for peak OLTP activity in any operating environment. This shipment management system executes an average of 650 transactions per second. In peak times, that number nearly triples, to 1820 transactions per second. Roadway implements the system using CCA’s Model 204 on an IBM S/390 platform. Storage is a mixture of IBM and Hitachi Data Systems devices.
At the forefront of Unix-based installations in database size was Mitsukoshi Information Service Co., Tokyo, Japan. Mainly used for transaction processing, the system manages customer information for this international retailer. The Mitsukoshi database contains 600 gigabytes of data. It is implemented in NCR Teradata DBMS on a 32-processor WorldMark 5100 and EMC disk drives.
As it did in 1997, The Dialog Corporation, Mountain View, California merited double Grand Prizes in this year’s program. Weighing in at an imposing 6.3 terabytes, this federated system surmounted all other decision support entries in size of database and in most rows/records in any environment. The DIALOG system, a commercial information retrieval and document delivery service, added 50 billion rows of data over the past year to reach the 150 billion mark. DIALOG runs a proprietary DBMS on a combination of Sun SPARC servers and Hitachi Data Systems hardware. Storage is provided by Kubic Multi CD-ROM for non-critical response times and EMC, Hitachi, Sun and IBM DASD.
The leading federated installation for rows in a transaction processing system, Unix-only environments, was Deere & Co., Moline, Illinois. Deere & Co. was awarded a Grand Prize for having exactly 2,502,739,507 rows in its database. The system is comprised primarily of DB2, with additional Oracle and SQL Server components. IBM’s DataJoiner provides an integrated view of the database. IBM supplies the system hardware, a cluster of IBM RS/6000 machines, and storage devices.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Bentonville, Arkansas, chalked up top honors in two categories: most rows for a centralized decision support system in all environments and in Unix environments only. This merchandising data warehouse is implemented in NCR’s Teradata DBMS and NCR WorldMark 5100 hardware, with storage provided by Seagate Barracuda drives. Wal-Mart outpaced all other entries by reporting an impressive 50 billion rows of data in the system, up from 20 billion since last year.
Metromail Corporation of Lincoln, Nebraska, received a pair of Grand Prize awards for most rows/records and peak online activity for a centralized, Unix-based transaction processing system. The Metromail database contains public information on over 100 million American households, which is used for direct marketing and fund-raising activities. The system took home one Grand Prize for 2.5 billion rows of data and another for a transaction processing speed of 92 tps. Metromail uses Oracle DBMS aboard Sequent Symmetry servers with disk storage provided by EMC.
The final Grand Prize recipient announced at the Summit reported the largest database in the 1998 program. United Parcel Service, Mahwah, New Jersey, was named champion of the 1998 Grand Prize winners for its federated transaction processing system. UPS took home one brass ring for over 11 terabytes of data and another one for 324 billion rows in the database. This unrivalled system is implemented in IBM’s DB2 on multiple IBM and Hitachi Data Systems; storage is supplied by IBM and EMC.
Winter Corporation and the VLDB Survey Program
Winter Corporation is an international consulting practice that offers expertise in data warehouses, operational databases, enterprise architectures and strategic information management decisions. The company is unusually adept at assuring that critical technical issues – such as database performance, scalability, availability and data quality – are resolved in accordance with the client’s business requirements. Winter Corporation clients include leading enterprises in retailing, financial services, health care, shipping, government and other industries.
Richard Winter is a noted expert in the field of very large databases with over 25 years of experience. Prior to founding Winter Corporation in 1992, he was chief technical officer at Computer Corporation of America, where he played a key role in pioneering the technology of very large databases and in the development of several of the earliest successful VLDB products. Mr. Winter is a past editor of Database Engineering, an IEEE publication, and is presently a contributing editor to Database Programming & Design magazine. His articles, publications and conference presentations are known worldwide in the database field.
The VLDB Survey Program is the principal data gathering mechanism of the Winter Research Program. The service examines a wide variety of VLDB-related products, technical issues and organizational approaches in order to create an extensive knowledge-base about very large databases. "What’s particularly valuable about the program is that it analyzes existing, operational VLDBs," notes Kathy Auerbach, Research Program Manager. "It allows us to offer fact-based research on how to utilize large-scale data resources to implement successful and timely business strategies."
All participants in the VLDB Survey Program receive the Members Report, a compilation of selected survey findings. The publication is also available to the public for a fee. Winter Corporation offers other services related to the survey program. These include assisting users in strategic and implementation decision, and helping vendors with market analysis, product strategy, performance and benchmark strategy, positioning and technical market communications.
Information on the company and the Database Research Program can be obtained from the Winter Corporation web site, wintercorp.com, or by calling Richard Winter or Kathy Auerbach at (617) 695-1800.