Despite the fact that object-oriented database systems (OODBS) have gained potential as promising database technology for non-standard applications such as computer integrated manufacturing there does not yet exist broad experience with the use of OODBS in real-world applications. One reason is that the features of OODBS, both functional and performance, haven't been exposed to a broader audience. The goal of this chapter is to shed some light upon evaluating the features of OODBS. In the first part of the chapter we discuss an extensive evaluation catalogue for advanced database systems which has been developed during the course of a real-world project. A discussion of the pros and cons of using such evaluation catalogues summarizes our experience. The second part of this chapter surveys existing performance benchmarks for OODBS. Special emphasis is given to the requirements a benchmark has to fulfill, and to the practical applicability and usefulness of the proposed benchmarks...
Christian Huemer, Gerti Kappel, S. Rausch-Schott,