A Performance Analysis of the Gamma Database Machine

Summary: Empirical evaluation of the Gamma DBM, measuring selection, join, and aggregation times plus single-tuple updates. Compared with Teradata DBC/1012, analyzes processor scaling, memory size, and disk page size, highlighting Gamma's strengths and weaknesses. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: hc3462b80e41349fc
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 1988
Pagerank: 5.6140776e-05
Overall Rank: 6,976 | 53.24%
DOI: 10.1145/50202.50245

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. David J. DeWitt (University of Wisconsin)
2. Shahram Ghandeharizadeh (University of Wisconsin)
3. Donovan Schneider (University of Wisconsin)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{dewitt_sigmod88,
        title = {{A Performance Analysis of the Gamma Database Machine}},
        author = {DeWitt, David J. and Ghandeharizadeh, Shahram and Schneider, Donovan},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '88},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/50202.50245},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/50202.50245},
        year = {1988}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 7 of 7 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
249	A Performance Evaluation of Four Parallel Join Algorithms in a Shared-Nothing Multiprocessor Environment	1989	SIGMOD	0.00023099455
491	Practical Skew Handling in Parallel Joins	1992	VLDB	0.00017383221
921	Tradeoffs in Processing Complex Join Queries via Hashing in Multiprocessor Database Machines	1990	VLDB	0.00013036878
1,291	Hybrid-Range Partitioning Strategy: A New Declustering Strategy for Multiprocessor Database Machines	1990	VLDB	0.00011147286
3,798	Exploiting Advanced Database Optimization Features for Large-Scale SAP R/3 Installations	2002	VLDB	6.994136e-05
4,328	Object Placement in Parallel Hypermedia Systems	1991	VLDB	6.6478797e-05
8,171	Parallelism and Concurrency Control Performance in Distributed Database Machines	1989	SIGMOD	5.3700491e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1	Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System	1979	SIGMOD	0.0023948467
7	Implementation Techniques For Main Memory Database Systems	1984	SIGMOD	0.00081781676
46	Benchmarking Database Systems: A Systematic Approach	1983	VLDB	0.00044656322
55	GAMMA - A High Performance Dataflow Database Machine	1986	VLDB	0.00040385073
83	Hashing Methods and Relational Algebra Operations	1984	VLDB	0.00035942723
156	Multiprocessor Hash-Based Join Algorithms	1985	VLDB	0.00028431734

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