Assessing the Suitability of In-Memory Databases in an Enterprise Context

It is still not fully clear if the increased query execution speed offered by in-memory databases unfolds its potential benefits over traditional disk-based databases in an enterprise context. This paper aims at comparing the performance of in-memory versus disk-based databases in such context to assess the added value of in-memory database technology for businesses. To achieve this goal, the authors conducted a literature review to find performance comparisons and benchmarks of the two database types in business contexts. Based on the results of this review an own performance comparison methodology assembling workloads mostly found in enterprise environments is compiled. The devised methodology is then applied by comparing two implementations of each database technology. The results show, that not all businesses profit equally from deploying in-memory databases but rather only those, which are dealing with large amounts of data and many concurrent users. Additionally, the tests revealed that disk-based and in-memory databases outperform each other at different query types. Limitations were that our research took place in a virtualized setup, that the SQL queries generating the workload were not subjected to any performance optimizations and that no database tuning or data staging took place. The research's genuine value lies in the compilation of a performance comparison for the two database technologies in an enterprise context, which can be used to further examine the suitability of in-memory databases for enterprise data storage requirements.