Database and Transaction Processing Performance Handbook (Introduction)

This handbook is a compendium of the popular performance and price/performance metrics for database systems and transaction processing systems. Each benchmark tries to answer the question: “What computer should I buy?” Clearly, the answer question is “The system that does the job with the lowest cost-of-ownership”. Cost-of-ownership includes project risks, programming costs, operations costs, hardware costs, and software costs. It’s difficult to quantify project risks, programming costs, and operations costs. In contrast, computer performance can be quantified and compared.