SP2Bench: A SPARQL Performance Benchmark

TL;DR

SP2Bench is a comprehensive benchmark platform designed to evaluate SPARQL query performance on RDF data, facilitating comparison of storage and query evaluation strategies in the context of the emerging W3C standard.

Contribution

It introduces a universal, language-specific benchmark with a data generator and representative queries based on the DBLP scenario, enabling systematic performance analysis.

Findings

Benchmark reveals strengths and weaknesses of existing engines.

Generated data mimics real-world DBLP characteristics.

Queries cover diverse SPARQL operator patterns.

Abstract

Recently, the SPARQL query language for RDF has reached the W3C recommendation status. In response to this emerging standard, the database community is currently exploring efficient storage techniques for RDF data and evaluation strategies for SPARQL queries. A meaningful analysis and comparison of these approaches necessitates a comprehensive and universal benchmark platform. To this end, we have developed SP^2Bench, a publicly available, language-specific SPARQL performance benchmark. SP^2Bench is settled in the DBLP scenario and comprises both a data generator for creating arbitrarily large DBLP-like documents and a set of carefully designed benchmark queries. The generated documents mirror key characteristics and social-world distributions encountered in the original DBLP data set, while the queries implement meaningful requests on top of this data, covering a variety of SPARQL operator constellations and RDF access patterns. As a proof of concept, we apply SP^2Bench to existing engines and discuss their strengths and weaknesses that follow immediately from the benchmark results.