Making Book on SQL Server 6.5

To compare SQL Server 6.5's performance with that of version 6.0, we timed queries performed on a book-order-entry database with five tables, each with anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 records at the start of the test. First, an order transaction queried for an ISBN number, executed a three-table join to find the author, and then repeated until five books had been looked up. Records to track the order were then inserted and the inventory updated. A payment transaction looked up an order record and updated it to indicate payment.

The simple-query version of the test looked for a range of orders, ret urning about 2000 records each time. The five-table join query searched for a range of 200 order numbers, listing the books in each order and the author of each book. With five books per order and two authors per book, the five-table test also produced a result set of about 2000 records.

The results shown below have been normalized, with SQL Server 6.0 results equal to 1. Higher is better.

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SQL Server 6.5

Order test (one user)      1.385
Order test (eight users)   1.106
Payment test (one user)    1.333
Payment test (eight users) 1.133
Simple-query               1.400
Five-table join query      1.417