Converting TPC-H Query Templates to Use DSQGEN for Easy Extensibility

Abstract

The ability to automatically generate queries that are not known a-priory is crucial for ad-hoc benchmarks. TPC-H solves this problem with a query generator, QGEN, which utilizes query templates to generate SQL queries. QGEN’s architecture makes it difficult to maintain, change or adapt to new types of query templates since every modification requires code changes. DSQGEN, a generic query generator, originally written for the TPC-DS benchmark, uses a query template language, which allows for easy modification and extension of existing query templates. In this paper we show how the current set of TPC-H query templates can be migrated to the template language of DSQGEN without any change to comparability of published TPC-H results. The resulting query template model provides opportunities for easier enhancement and extension of the TPC-H workload, which we demonstrate.