“Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server 2000 database, which is
set to ship within a month, suffered a double embarrassment
this week. Record TPC-C benchmark numbers, which Microsoft has
touted for the past five months, were scratched from the
official records after the Transaction Processing Council found the
results “noncompliant.” And IBM published numbers twice as high as
Microsoft’s with its own DB2.”
“At the launch of Windows 2000 in February, Microsoft Chairman
and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates touted the performance
numbers, which showed SQL Server 2000 and Windows 2000 processing
227,079.15 transactions per minute (TPM-C), the highest ever
measured. The result, which beat high-end RISC servers from IBM and
Sun Microsystems Inc., was achieved with a cluster of 12 Compaq
ProLiant 8500 servers. The TPC-C numbers have figured highly in
presentations by Microsoft executives over the last five
months.”
“But at a meeting of the TPC last Thursday, the benchmark “was
found noncompliant to our policies,” said TPC chairman Jerrold
Buggert. “Given the nature of the problem, the tests need to be
redone.” The Compaq/Microsoft benchmark was challenged because the
tested configuration didn’t allow for the primary key of a
distributed database to be updated. TPC declined to identify who
challenged the results, citing the confidentiality of the challenge
procedure.”