How OceanBase Overtook Oracle: The Story Behind Two Record‑Breaking TPC‑C Wins

In August 2019, Alibaba’s self‑developed distributed relational database OceanBase achieved a record‑breaking TPC‑C result of 60.88 million tpmC, surpassing Oracle and becoming the world’s top OLTP system.

Just nine months later, in May 2020, OceanBase shattered its own record, reaching 707 million tpmC – an 11.6‑fold increase – demonstrating rapid performance gains through relentless optimization.

From a Humble Beginning to Global Leader

OceanBase started in 2010 as a modest project for a simple “wishlist” feature, facing skepticism about its feasibility. Over a decade, the team grew from a single‑node prototype to a core component of Alibaba’s payment systems, handling the entire Alipay accounting database by 2017.

Team Effort and Hardships

During the first TPC‑C run, engineers worked nonstop for two weeks, battling audit requirements and performance bottlenecks. The second run benefited from lessons learned, allowing a smoother preparation and a shorter optimization cycle.

Team members describe the work as “impossible missions” that required “night‑and‑day” effort, yet the shared sense of purpose and “plain‑spoken” culture helped them overcome each obstacle.

Technical Advantages

OceanBase’s distributed architecture, built on the Paxos consensus protocol, provides unlimited horizontal scalability, strong consistency, high availability, and low‑intrusiveness for business workloads. These traits made it possible to out‑perform single‑node databases and achieve the TPC‑C records.

Looking Ahead

Future goals include improving ease‑of‑use, reducing costs for external customers, and expanding OceanBase’s reach beyond Alibaba’s internal services.

For a comprehensive collection of OceanBase technical resources, see the links below.