Oracle Parallel Processing

Case Study 1: An OLTP Application on an SMP Platform

Diversified Electronics is engaged in e-commerce and sells electronics products over the Web. Their product line ranges from cameras to camcorders to audio-visual equipment and accessories. The company maintains detailed technical information on hundreds of products from hundreds of manufacturers. Customers log on to the web site, pick items to buy, choose a method of delivery, and make payment by providing a credit card number in a secured environment. The database is the backbone of the web-based ordering system. At peak times, between 200 and 400 users access the database. The ordering system processes about 10,000 orders in an average month. The current size of the database is 20 GB.

The customer base of Diversified Electronics is growing at a rapid rate. Because of its rapid growth, the company can’t afford to thrash around and re-architect their existing database platform. Instead, Diversified Electronics wants to maintain its database application on a scalable environment that can grow to match the anticipated growth in load for the next few years.

Application Requirements

Diversified Electronics’ database contains business-critical information. In turn, this information is used by several mission-critical applications. Two of the most important requirements for the database involve the following:

High scalability

The e-commerce business of Diversified Electronics is growing rapidly, and a fourfold increase in sales volume ...