Statement of Fact
Software AG Sets Performance Record of More than 1 Million Commands
PER Second for Its Adabas Database on IBM Mainframes
Software AG has announced that its Adabas transactional database management system
has achieved a record-high performance milestone in a benchmark test with assistance
from IBM®. Running under IBM’s z/OS operating system, Adabas attained incredible
transaction speeds of more than 1 million commands per second—a record speed on a
commercial mainframe system.
This new performance benchmark is more than triple the speed of a previously recorded
benchmark from 2006. Software AG achieved unmatched performance for OLTP environments, benefiting customers with large mission-critical applications that access huge
Adabas databases. Customers with ultra-high-end performance requirements, processing
ever-increasing volumes of data, now have no limits on the growth of their business and
virtually unlimited throughput and scalability.
“As these remarkable test results demonstrate, Software AG continues to build on the Adabas
reputation as being one of the fastest, leading-edge enterprise data management systems on
industry-leading hardware and operating system platforms of IBM—to the ongoing benefit of
our mutual customers,” said Wolfram Jost, CTO of R&D and Product Management for Software AG.
The benchmark used Adabas 8.2.5, running under IBM’s z/OS v1.13 operating system on IBM’s
latest zEnterprise EC12 class mainframe. It attained transaction speeds of more than 1.183
million commands per second using 32 parallel servers. A previous benchmark was taken in
2006 on Adabas 8.1.1, which attained speeds of approximately 320,000 commands per second.
To put 1 million commands in perspective: If every spectator at all 16 NFL games on a particular
weekend were to simultaneously ask one bank, running one database, to send their account
status to their cell phones, they would all receive simultaneous sub-second replies.
Adabas development changes since Adabas 8.1.1 in key nucleus components have accounted
for many performance improvements from the tests done in 2006, along with enablement of
new IBM z/OS operating system enhancements. Some of the Adabas changes include:
improved parallelism in handling concurrent users and improved performance of large object
(LOB) updating and nucleus support of pools, queues and tables in virtual storage above the 2
gigabyte bar, freeing virtual storage below the bar for other uses. In addition, Adabas handling
of I/O has been optimized.
During the testing that took place at IBM’s Benchmark Center in Poughkeepsie, New York,
Adabas 8.2.5 also took advantage of new IBM z/OS functionality, such as new support for zHPF
I/O. zHPF facilitates support for IBM z/OS users, providing performance improvements in I/O
activity.
Software AG also developed an enhancement to support IBM Large Pages, which enables 1 MB
operating system pages for IBM z10 customers and 2GB operating system pages for the IBM
zEnterprise EC12 customers. The support for IBM’s z/OS Large Page support continues the
enablement of IBM new hardware and software technology exploitation by Software AG.
Software AG, assisted by IBM, also took the opportunity to test the new IBM Flash Express,
which offers improved levels of availability and performance as it relates to the operating
system paging. In testing, improvements were seen in the z/OS page with Adabas workload
using IBM Flash Express.
It is Software AG’s intention to provide more details on the Adabas 8.2 high-performance
testing on the IBM zEnterprise EC12 via a white paper to be published by mid-2013.
HIGHLIGHTS
More than 1 million commands per
second more than triples the fastest
speed recorded for Adabas on a
commercial mainframe system
Adabas performance provides unmatched
throughput and scalability for OLTP
environments, benefiting customers with
large mission-critical applications
Adabas 8.2 and IBM’s latest zEnterprise
EC12 class mainframe are currently
available for customers needing to
process ever-increasing volumes of data
ABOUT SOFTWARE AG
Software AG helps organizations achieve their business
objectives faster. The company’s big data, integration
and business process technologies enable customers
to drive operational efficiency, modernize their systems
and optimize processes for smarter decisions and better
service. Building on over 40 years of customer-centric
innovation, the company is among the top 10 fastestgrowing technology companies in the world and is
ranked as a leader in 15 market categories, fueled by
core product families Adabas and Natural, ARIS, Terracotta
and webMethods. Learn more at www.SoftwareAG.com.
Software AG – Get There Faster
© 2013 Software AG
All rights reserved. Software AG and all Software AG products are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Software AG. Other product and company
names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
SAG_Statement_Fact_FL_Feb13
The Adabas database is a core Software AG technology with a large customer base primarily in
banking, insurance and government. It is used by customers that have extremely high transaction-processing requirements, critical to their operational business, such as billions of credit card
or financial dealings per day.