Benchmark catalog

A benchmark catalog is a built-in external catalog that generates data on the fly for standard benchmark suites. It lets you run queries against TPC-H, TPC-DS, and SSB schemas without loading data.

NOTE

All data is generated in-flight at query time and is not persisted. Do not use this catalog as a benchmark source.

Create a benchmark catalog

Syntax

CREATE EXTERNAL CATALOG <catalog_name>
[COMMENT <comment>]
PROPERTIES ("key"="value", ...)

Parameters

catalog_name

The name of the benchmark catalog. The naming conventions are as follows:

• The name can contain letters, digits (0-9), and underscores (_). It must start with a letter.
• The name is case-sensitive and cannot exceed 1023 characters in length.

comment

The description of the benchmark catalog. This parameter is optional.

PROPERTIES

The properties of the benchmark catalog. PROPERTIES must include the following parameters:

Parameter	Required	Default value	Description
type	Yes	None	The type of the data source. Set the value to benchmark.
scale	No	1	Scale factor for generated data. The value must be greater than 0. Non-integer values are supported.

Example

CREATE EXTERNAL CATALOG bench
PROPERTIES ("type" = "benchmark", "scale" = "1.0");

Query benchmark data

The benchmark catalog exposes the following databases:

• tpcds: TPC-DS schema.
• tpch: TPC-H schema.
• ssb: Star Schema Benchmark schema.

The following example shows how to switch to the catalog and query the SSB schema:

SET CATALOG bench;
SHOW DATABASES;
USE ssb;
SHOW TABLES;
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM date;

Usage notes

• The schemas and tables are fixed to the built-in benchmark definitions, so you cannot create, alter, or drop objects in this catalog.
• The data is generated in-flight at query time and is not stored in any external system.