Enduring Trillion-Scale Financial Core Tests: GBase 8s's Three-Year Record of a “Steady Win” in IT Application Innovation
In 2022, a leading city commercial bank began replacing its core system database with a domestic solution and adopted the GBase 8s database (gbase database). Within three years, four major systems were rolled out: the business decision analysis platform has been running stably for over 1,000 days; the core business query system handles peak loads of 20,000 queries per second with zero errors; and O&M costs were reduced by more than 25%. This article breaks down the four key technical strengths of GBase 8s and shows how a domestic database can tackle the “nightmare-level” demands of the financial industry.
The bank spent three years both planning and executing this “core-system replacement.”
In 2022, with credit card business growing explosively, the management team was making decisions based on piles of reports, and efficiency was in urgent need of improvement. The IT application innovation wave was sweeping in—it was time to replace the core system database with a domestic one.
This is no easy task. The requirements imposed on a database by a banking system are akin to “nightmare-level” difficulty: it must withstand query spikes of tens of thousands per second, achieve automatic failover within seconds with zero data loss during failures, and ideally enable a “painless migration” of legacy systems.
The bank eventually chose GBase 8s. Over three years, four major systems were rolled out:
September 2022: The business decision analysis platform went live first, integrating multidimensional metrics covering business development, risk, and compliance. For the first time, management could monitor operational dynamics in real time through a visual interface.
November 2024: The unified identity authentication system enabled “single sign-on across the entire bank.” The core business query system became a “data hub,” providing query services for channels such as mobile banking and smart counters.
April 2025: The specialty business management system made its grand finale appearance, storing data on environmental benefit calculations, carbon emission accounting, and more, empowering precision implementation of specialized lending businesses.
How did GBase 8s withstand these pressures? Let’s break down the four technical cards it held:
Card #1: A High-Availability Architecture as Reliable as “Double Insurance”
Leveraging multiple solutions such as SSC, HAC, and RHAC, it automatically fails over within seconds if the primary node goes down, and issues on secondary nodes do not affect services. With RPO=0 (zero data loss) and RTO < 30 seconds (recovery within half a minute), the system stands steady like a roly-poly toy, even under extreme conditions.
Card #2: Compatibility That Saves You from “Tearing Your Hair Out”
With 92% data type compatibility and 96% coverage of basic functions, Oracle PL/SQL syntax, triggers, and stored procedures can largely be reused directly. Combined with the MTK visual migration tool, the bank’s team completed a migration that would have taken months in just a few weeks—a real boon for engineers’ blood pressure.
Card #3: Performance That “Scales Elastically” Thanks to the Architecture
The DSA (Dynamic Scalable Architecture) makes full use of server resources, achieving 1.6 million tpmC in a 500-warehouse TPCC benchmark. Under a peak of 20,000 queries per second, the core business query system maintains millisecond-level response latency, keeping the user experience smooth.
Card #4: Full-Stack Compatibility Avoids Becoming an “Ecosystem Island”
From domestic chips and operating systems to domestic middleware, GBase 8s integrates seamlessly into the domestic software and hardware ecosystem, greatly simplifying IT innovation transformation.
Conclusion
From a single pilot to large-scale deployment across multiple scenarios, and from “usable” to “excellent,” this bank’s three-year journey proves one thing: a domestic database can not only handle core financial operations but also become an accelerator for business innovation.
When a bank with nearly one trillion yuan in assets has been running smoothly on a domestic database for over 1,000 days, and when 20,000 queries per second are digested with ease, the answer to the IT application innovation challenge is clear.