STAC-M3 Report: Kx Systems kdb+ on Oracle Sun Fire X4540

First-ever tick database benchmark that uses community-developed testing standards. STAC has released an audited STAC-M3 Benchmark(TM) of Kx Systems' kdb+ 2.6 on the Oracle Sun Fire X4540 Storage Server. kdb+ is a system for managing large time series of data such as tick-by-tick price histories for financial instruments. The Sun Fire X4540 is a rack-mounted server with integrated direct-attached storage. This is the first-ever tick database benchmark that uses community-developed testing standards. The test specifications were developed by a working group of the STAC Benchmark Council that consisted of leading trading firms and vendors. The working group has now submitted these specifications for an approval vote of the full Council. In response to the near-term business requirements of customers on the working group, the initial version of STAC-M3 focuses on I/O performance with respect to heavy historical data loads in single-user and multi-user situations. Among other things, this makes STAC-M3 suitable for comparing the performance of alternative storage architectures (storage, interconnects, chipset, file system, OS, etc.) with a given tick database application. For the full STAC Report, click here. For a video overview of STAC-M3 or to hear KX and Oracle discuss this benchmark, see the materials from the STAC Performance Summit on June 21. Full members of the STAC Benchmark Council can access the benchmark specifications at www.STACresearch.com/m3. Premium subscribers to the Market Data STAC Track can request the programs used in the kdb+ benchmarks in order to run the same tests on systems in the privacy of their own labs (the programs are in the STAC Vault: www.STACresearch.com/vault).