Microsoft Corp will issue a response to Oracle Corp’s $1m database challenge in January 1999, officials said yesterday. According to a spokesperson for Redmond, the company has accepted the challenge and will publish the relevant benchmark tests some time in January. The news comes after Oracle officials last week told ComputerWire that Microsoft had yet to formerly respond to the challenge. The latter pits the Oracle8i database against Microsoft’s new SQL Server 7.0 database. Specifically, Oracle said it would pay $1m to the first person who can demonstrate that SQL Server 7.0 can come within 100 times of Oracle’s best published performance for query number 5 of the current TPC-D specification (a benchmark specifically designed to test database performance). To comply, the challenger would have to run a complete 1-terabyte TPC-D benchmark, including all requirements for loading, updating and querying data and publish a full disclosure report of all performance metrics. Oracle further specified that the benchmark has to be audited by a TPC-certified auditor to ensure compliance with TPC benchmark rules. Ken Jacobs, Oracle’s VP, server product development said the company did receive a phone call immediately after OpenWorld but that it had heard nothing since Oracle formerly posted details of the challenge on its web site on November 16. He said it was posted because Microsoft had been making unsubstantiated claims about Sequel server but, up till now, it hasn’t issued any TPC-D benchmarking data at all. It’s time for Microsoft to put up or shut up, Jacobs said, it hopes the challenge will go away but it won’t. For its part, Oracle said it published a new record 1- terabyte TPC-D benchmark on November 3 for fast datawarehouse query response running Oracle8i on Sun’s EnterpriseTM 10000 server and the SolarisTM operating environment. The Microsoft spokesperson said the delay in issuing a response was due to the fact that Ellison had actually issued a number of $1m challenges and there was some confusion as to which one Microsoft had to respond to. At OpenWorld, Ellison said 200 times faster, but the final posting said 100 times, she said, based on the final challenge posted on Oracle’s web site, we will be issuing a response in January, she added. For more details on Oracle’s challenge see www.oracle.com/challenge. á