OO7 Performance Benchmark Now Available in Java

New implementation of 1993 standard benchmark shows significant performance benefits from using object databases rather than object-relational mappers

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Sep. 26, 2006 - ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent, non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, announce that a new benchmark confirms significant performance gains from using object databases for persisting objects rather than object-relational mappers like Hibernate.

Researchers of the ESPRESSO Research Group at the Department of Computer Science, University of Pretoria in South Africa, P. van Zyl, A. Boake, and D. Kourie, have ported the OO7 benchmark from C++ to Java to test the performance of state-of-the-art object persistence solutions. The OO7 benchmark is the single most recognizable benchmark available in the industry and was provided by M.J. Carey in 1993, based on R. Cattell's OO1 benchmark from 1992.

The researchers consequently benchmarked the performance of the object database db4o (from db4objects) against that of the object-relational mapper Hibernate (from Jboss, now a division of RedHat). In 95% of OO7's predefined test cases, object databases provide performance far superior to object-relational mappers. For certain complex queries db4o was 5400% faster than Hibernate.

"By using a benchmark, it has been possible to compare and gain insight into the performance aspects of two object persistence mechanisms (object databases vs object-relational mapping to relational databases), as represented by two popular Open Source implementations (db4o and Hibernate)," wrote the researchers. "It was found that db4o's overall performance was better than that of Hibernate. Many of the test results seem to confirm our rules of thumb (here, that the overhead of object-relational translation causes ORM-based implementations to be consistently slower than staying in object form with an object database)."

Detailed results are included in the paper "027.01 Comparing the Performance of Object Databases and ORMs" which ODBMS.ORG publishes in an early version, available for immediate download. The paper was also submitted to the SAICSIT 2006 conference in Cape Winelands; a final version will be available in the near future on ACM and will include some final comments about transactions. The group's speaker, Pieter van Zyl, was invited to join ODBMS.ORG's panel of 80 internationally recognizable experts of object database technology.

Contact ODBMS.ORG at editor@odbms.org.