One of the common ways to classify database workloads is whether
it is “read intensive” or “write intensive”. In other
words, whether the workload is dominated by reads or writes.
Why should you care? Because recognizing if the workload is read
intensive or write intensive will impact your hardware choices,
database configuration as well as what techniques you can apply
for performance optimization and scalability.
This question looks trivial on the surface, but as you go
deeper—complexity emerges. There are different “levels” of reads
and writes for you to consider. You can also choose to look at
event counts or at the time it takes to do operations. These can
provide very different responses, especially as the cost
difference between a single read and a single write can be an
order of magnitude.
Let’s examine the TPC-C Benchmark from this point of view, or
more specifically its …
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