A Comparison of Leading Database Storage Engines in Support of Online Analytical Processing in an Open Source Environment

• Main Author: Tocci, Gabriel
• Format: Others
• Published: Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University 2013
• Subjects: Online Analytical Processing; OLAP; MySQL; MyISAM; InnoDB; TPC-DS; Databases and Information Systems
• Online Access: https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1111; https://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2271&context=etd

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) has become the de facto data analysis technology used in modern decision support systems. It has experienced tremendous growth, and is among the top priorities for enterprises. Open source systems have become an effective alternative to proprietary systems in terms of cost and function. The purpose of the study was to investigate the performance of two leading database storage engines in an open source OLAP environment. Despite recent upgrades in performance features for the InnoDB database engine, the MyISAM database engine is shown to outperform the InnoDB database engine under a standard benchmark. This result was demonstrated in tests that included concurrent user sessions as well as asynchronous user sessions using data sets ranging from 6GB to 12GB. Although MyISAM outperformed InnoDB in all test performed, InnoDB provides ACID compliant transaction technologies are beneficial in a hybrid OLAP/OLTP system.