A. Software Packages Assessed
For the experimental evaluation we decided to consider a
representative set of database solutions that can be found in
the field. From the DBMS perspective, we selected two
commercial DBMS engines, namely Oracle 10g and
Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and two open source ones,
namely PostgreSQL 8 and MySQL Community Edition 5.
Oracle and SQL Server are two of the most widely-used
commercial DBMS, and these particular versions account for
a representative number of installations. PostgresSQL and
MySQL account for the majority of DBMS installations that
use open source software, and are very popular alternatives
to commercial software.