Winter TopTen Program

The Winter TopTen Program is a highly visible, worldwide survey that identifies the world’s largest and most heavily used databases.  Its primary objective is to recognize the database practitioners whose achievements have advanced the boundaries of database size and power.  The program also discloses the products, platforms and architectures that support the leading implementations, and, salutes the vendors and database-related organizations whose products and services enable the world’s biggest data repositories. 

2003 TopTen Program

In May 2003, Winter Corporation launched its fifth global campaign of the Winter TopTen Program.

The requirements for participating in the 2003 TopTen Program were simple.  Any commercial implementation with a minimum of 500 GB of data for Windows/NT platforms and 1 TB of data for all other platforms was eligible (Winter Corp.’s definition of database size excludes free space and redundancy).  Respondents completed and validated a short questionnaire on size, workload and DBMS, server and storage environments. 

Program Results

The 2003 program received 313 completed surveys, of which 141 were qualified through the validation process.  The surveys originated from 23 countries around the globe. Award winners were announced for 20 different categories, defined by usage (transaction processing versus decision support), operating system and program metric (database size, normalized data volume, number of rows/records/objects and peak workload).  

There were 77 different award winners in the 2003 program, many of whom received multiple TopTen awards. Key findings of the survey were reported in a special, interactive teleconference on December 10^th.  Replay the teleconference presentation and be on top of the latest discoveries. Also, be sure to check out who made the program’s list of TopTen award winners.

Visit our site again for details on the next TopTen Program.

A Dynamic Frontier

Winter Corp. research indicates that database size and power are growing consistently faster than ever. Results from the 2003 program showed that size and workload dramatically expanded the boundaries of scalability once again.  Even after the campaign was complete, respondents contacted us, seeking to update the metrics they had submitted only a few months prior.

Respondents projected that by the end of 2004, both transaction processing and decision support systems will more than double in size.  These figures put us on track to break the 100-TB barrier sometime next year.  Could your database be the first to cross this threshold?  Be sure to participate in the 2004 TopTen Program and find out.