Oracle Berkeley DB: Performance Metrics and Benchmarks Page 8

a Paxos-compliant election algorithm. It replicates transaction logs among

systems. The transport of these logs is application-specific. To replicate

database information, Berkeley DB High Availability uses a transport layer

provided by the application to relay coordination messages and log segments

among replicas. Any form of message transport can be employed. The

application designer may choose among hardware-specific transport,

TCP/IP or any other communications infrastructure. For this reason,

measurement of the High Availability system is beyond the scope of this

paper.

COMPARING BERKELEY DB TO RELATIONAL DATABASE

MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Client/Server architecture increases complexity and slows down performance

because applications must cross a process boundary and often a network link to

access data. SQL query processing is extra code that a relational engine must

execute at runtime. Parsing, planning, optimizing and executing a query introduce

runtime overhead to each data access. Oracle offers a wide range of SQL-capable

database management products for applications that need the expressive power

and flexibility of SQL. For those that need fast, reliable, embeddable data

management engine without a human database administrator, however, Berkeley

DB is often a more attractive choice. Berkeley DB delivers the most direct route to

data and avoids cross-process copies, query parsing and planning overhead found

in relational systems.

Naturally, head-to-head comparisons depend heavily on the application and its

data management requirements.

CONCLUSIONS

Oracle Berkeley DB, as a component of your application, can be configured in a

number of different ways to meet specific application requirements for speed,

scale, and reliability. This paper has taken a look at a few of the critical aspects of

any database system and shown that Berkeley DB has benefited from years of

research, design and careful tuning.

Berkeley DB provides outstanding speed, efficiency and flexibility for a wide range

of applications. Berkeley DB offers extraordinary programming flexibility for

applications ranging from mobile phones to desktop applications, large servers,

networking gear and major websites. Download Berkeley DB today at

http://www.oracle.com/database/berkeley-db.html

, and run the performance

tests on your platform.