Oracle Fined For Benchmark Claims 81
pickens writes "Information Week reports that the Transaction Processing Council, which sets benchmarks for measuring database performance, has fined Oracle $10,000 for Oracle's ads published August 27 and September 3 on the front page of the Wall Street Journal which violate the 'fair use' rules that govern TPC members by 'comparing an existing TPC result to something that does not exist.' The ads said to expect a product announcement on October 14 that would demonstrate that some sort of hybrid Oracle-Sun setup would offer two-digit performance on the TPC-C online transaction processing test compared to IBM's 6 million transaction per minute result on its Power 595 running AIX and DB2. The TPC Council serves as a neutral forum where benchmark results are aired and compared. 'At the time of publication, they didn't have anything' submitted to the council says Michael Majdalany, administrator of the council adding that that Oracle is free to use TPC numbers once it submits an audited result for the Sun-Oracle system. Fines by the TPC are infrequent, with the last action — a $5,000 fine — levied against Microsoft in 2005 for unsupported claims about SQL Server. 'It takes a fairly serious violation to warrant a member being fined,' says Majdalany."
I am almost certain ... (Score:5, Funny)
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm an embedded engineer so could someone tell me: is two digit performance better or worse than 6 million per minute ?
Calculated Risk (Score:4, Funny)
Basically, Oracle takes a calculated risk of a bad reputation vs. making buyers hold off on purchases from competitors for a short time. My guess is that Oracle will be able to produce something living up to the hype.
Why not have a little excitement and see if a competitor will match what Oracle is predicting? I can bet that in the labs a lot of products do a lot better in some areas than the released versions. Maybe IBM can loosen the reins and run with Oracle.
Fun in the capitalist sun. Or is that Sun?