A methodology for benchmarking distributed database management systems

A methodology for benchmarking distributed database management systems is proposed. A distributed environment is characterized in terms of the communication costs incurred in data movement between sites, the number of nodes that participate in processing a query and the data distribution scheme used in the network. These three major characteristics form a basis for eight query types that capture the query performance characteristics in the network. It is demonstrated that the performance characteristics of any distributed database management system can be captured by running queries based on these query types. Preliminary results obtained in applying the methodology in a single-user LAN environment are presented