Oracle LDAP numbers are in

In our review of Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers last month we were unable to include performance test results for Oracle's Oracle Internet Directory (OID) because of time constraints involved with the review. Since then, we have completed the performance tests.

OID's performance fell in the middle of the seven LDAP directory servers we tested. OID was slower than directory servers built by iPlanet, Innosoft and Critical Path (formerly Isocor) but was faster than products from Novell, Siemens and Computer Associates. We rated Oracle 6 out of 10 for performance, an overall rating of 5.6 for fourth place in our rankings.

Oracle's load time was impressive, falling just behind the leaders in this performance category, iPlanet and Innosoft. Oracle's bulk-load process has two parts. First, the software converts the standard Lightweight Directory Interface File (LDIF) format into an Oracle-specific format; then it loads this format directly into OID. The conversion takes most of the time; if you could write out your data in the Oracle-specific format instead of LDIF, you'd find Oracle the fastest of all tested at bulk loading. Oracle sent a team to assist with the performance testing, and they went through four rounds of tuning, which substantially improved OID's performance from its out-of-the-box scores. For the seven other performance test categories that included messaging, addressing and wildcard queries, OID turned in respectable, but unremarkable, performance numbers (see graphic below).

LDAP performance numbers for Oracle's Oracle Internet Directory
Load time: Records/sec	139
Messaging test with one client: Operations/sec	64
Messaging test with 10 clients: Operations/sec	228
Addressing (wildcard) test with one client: Operations/sec	17
Addressing (wildcard) test with 10 clients: Operations/sec	41
SearchRate test with one client: Operations/sec	64
SearchRate test with 10 clients: Operations/sec	234
Modify test: Operations/sec	23

Snyder is a senior partner at Opus One in Tucson, Ariz., specializing in security and messaging technologies. He can be reached at joel.snyder@opus1.com

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