APB-1 OLAP Benchmark Release II

APB-1 OLAP Benchmark Release IIOLAP CouncilAPB-1 OLAP BenchmarkRelease IINovember 1998IntroductionThe OLAP Council has sponsored the development of an analytical processing benchmark, the APB-1. The benchmark simulates a realistic On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) business situation that exercises server-based software. The goal of the APB-1 is to measure a server's overall OLAP performance rather than the performance of specific tasks. To ensure the relevance of the APB-1 to actual business environments, the operations performed on the database have been carefully chosen to reflect common business operations. These operations include the following:Bulk loading of data from internal or external data sourcesIncremental loading of data from operational systemsAggregation of input level data along hierarchiesCalculation of new data based on business modelsTime series analysisQueries with a high degree of complexityDrill-down through hierarchiesAPB-1 OLAP Benchmark Release IIAd hoc queriesMultiple on-line sessionsSuccessful OLAP applications must provide "just-in-time information". The key to effective decision-making is having the right information at the right time. Judging a server's ability to accomplish this goal is more than simply measuring an OLAP server's processing performance. Its abilities to represent complex business relationships and to respond to changing business requirements are equally important. While the APB-1 does not try to ...