Benchmarks: Performance advantages to store complex object structures

db4o is fast. In the PolePosition open source database benchmark db4o displays significant performance advantages, especially when it comes to storing complex object structures. Several "circuits" represent different use cases. You can download, modify, and run them for yourself.

The Barcelona circuit, for instance, shows transaction performance (100 selects on 30,000 objects over 5 levels of inheritance structures) for different database products and data access methods. As you can plainly see, resolving the object-relational mismatch by using an object-relational mapper like Hibernate or VOA (JDO) costs a lot of performance. db4o overcomes the trade-off between object-orientation and speed: You can now store objects natively and enjoy great performance gains.

Benchmarks always depend on the nature of a tested task. The PolePosition authors deserve credit because they show which database is a good fit for which task. The rule of thumb is: The flatter and simpler the data, the better you perform with direct SQL access to relational databases, e.g. by JDBC. When object structures become more complex, you can not afford to ignore object databases. If performance is of concern, then Hibernate, VOA (JDO) or other object-relational mapper solutions are not a viable choice, because their negative impact on performance is dramatic.

Below are other benchmark "circuits" that demonstrate different use cases:

• Melbourne - writes 100,000 unstructured flat objects of one kind in bulk mode
• Bahrain - writes 30,000 simple flat objects individually
• Sepang - writes an object tree of depth 14
• Imola - retrieves 300,000 objects by native ID