In conventional database systems, performance is primarily measured by the number of transactions completed within a unit time. In real-time applications, timing and criticality characteristics of transactions must be taken into account. In this paper, we examine the performance of StarBase, a firm real-time database system. The deadline guarantee ratio and average response times are the primary performance measures. There have been performance studies on real-time database systems, but most of them were performed using simulation. This work demonstrates the feasibility of developing a real-time database system with an acceptableperformance.