Oracle Rdb's Record Caching Model
Richard Anderson (Oracle Corporation)
Gopalan Arun (Oracle Corporation)
Richard Frank (Oracle Corporation)
ABSTRACT
In this paper we present a more efficient record based caching model
than the conventional page (disk block) based scheme. In a record
caching model, individual records are stored together in a section
of shared memory to form the cache. Traditional relational database
systems have individual pages that are stored together in shared memory
to form the cache and records are then extracted from these pages on demand.
The record cache model has better memory utilization than the page model
and also helps reduce overheads like page fetches/writes, page locks and code path.
In May 1996, Oracle Rdb announced a record breaking number of 14227 tpmC on
a Digital AlphaServer 8400. At the time, this was the best TPC-C performance
achieved on a single SMP machine. A total of 15 record caches, caching
19.5 million records, consuming almost 7 GB of memory, formed the bulk of the
shared memory.