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The relative performance and scalability of open source and proprietary relational database systems (RDBMS) were examined using a newly constructed suite of benchmark case tests. Technology managers can save money on software licenses if they switch to open source products, but many have not done so because of concerns about the performance of open source products relative to commercial products. The relative performance and scalability of some of the most popular open source and proprietary RDBMS products was quantitatively compared. A benchmark case was constructed to measure three aspects of RDBMS performance: batch load, transaction processing, and report generation. The benchmark scores for proprietary database products were higher than for open source database products. The differences in performance and scalability were not enough to justify the much higher cost of proprietary database products except in cases where the cost of a proprietary solution would not be a major to an individual technology manager. Future researchers run the benchmark on a different platform and examine the performance of newer versions of the RDBMS products reviewed here or different database products.
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