On benchmarking the ORACLE parallel server on nCUBE2

Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) architectures have been proposed as a promising alternative to mainframe computers for the largest database and transaction processing tasks. An example of this trend is the implementation of ORACLE parallel database server on several massively parallel machines like Meiko, nCUBE2, and KSR. While many claims have been made for the performance of ORACLE on MPP platforms, few studies have been done to test the actual performance advantages and disadvantages. A benchmark study of the performance and scalability of the ORACLE Parallel Server v6.2 on nCUBE2 is reported here. The advantages of the stripe file system and the gigacache are also studied and displayed in the benchmark results.