The Michigan benchmark: towards XML query performance diagnostics

ARTICLE IN PRESS
Information Systems 31 (2006) 73–97
www.elsevier.com/locate/infosys
The Michigan benchmark: towards XML query
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performance diagnostics
Kanda Runapongsa, Jignesh M. Patel , H.V. Jagadish,
Yun Chen, Shurug Al-Khalifa
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, 1301 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor,
MI 48109-2122, USA
Received 27 August 2004; received in revised form 24 September 2004; accepted 30 September 2004
Abstract
Weproposea micro-benchmarkforXMLdatamanagementtoaidengineersindesigningimprovedXMLprocessing
engines. This benchmark is inherently different from application-level benchmarks, which are designed to help users
choose between alternative products. We primarily attempt to capture the rich variety of data structures and
distributionspossibleinXML,andtoisolatetheireffects,withoutimitatinganyparticularapplication.Thebenchmark
specifiesasingledatasetagainstwhichcarefullyspecifiedqueriescanbeusedtoevaluatesystemperformanceforXML
data with various characteristics.
Wehaveusedthebenchmarktoanalyzetheperformanceofthreedatabasesystems:twonativeXMLDBMSs,anda
commercial ORDBMS. The benchmark reveals key strengths and weaknesses of these systems. We find that relational techniques are effective for XML query processing in many cases, but are sensitive to query
rewriting, and require better support for efficiently determining indirect structural containment. In addition, ...