Using Benchmark Factory

Ever needed to benchmark your database platform? Maybe you've installed some new software and/or hardware upgrades and are wondering if they'll make a measurable difference. But who has the time to write extensive benchmark tests? Moreover, who has the knowledge? For example, industry-standard tests such as the TPC-C are controlled as intellectual property and it costs money to buy even just its specification. So what's the poor DBA to do? Use Quest Software's Benchmark Factory, the best and only tool out there for making the construction and execution of industry standard benchmarks a snap. Any DBA can set up and execute any of these tests with just a few mouse clicks. For example, here are the extremely simple steps for running an industry-standard TPC-C benchmark against an Oracle database:

1. Launch Benchmark Factory's New Project Wizard as shown in Figure 10.13 and choose to create a standard benchmark. Click Next to continue.

   Figure 10.13. Benchmark FactoryNew Benchmark Wizard.

   

2. Restrict the available test type to benchmarks for databases and then select the TPC-C benchmark as shown in Figure 10.14. Although there are numerous database benchmark tests to choose from, the TPC-C is one of the best known and most often quoted.

   Figure 10.14. Benchmark Factorychoose benchmark type.

   

3. Select the benchmark scale (that is, its size in relative numeric terms, which translates to predefined sizes) as shown in Figure 10.15. The larger the selected scale, the longer initial object creation and population will take. But you need to select a size that makes sense for the number of simulated concurrent users that will access this database during the benchmark's execution.

   Figure 10.15. Benchmark Factoryspecify benchmark size.

   

4. The New Project Wizard will have created a test for you, but only the steps necessary to create and populate the necessary database. You must now select a transaction load scenario and specify the desired properties as shown in Figure 10.16. In this example, the User Load is specified to be 10 concurrent database users. This small load makes sense given the prior step's selection of a very small scale for database sizing. Of course, you can easily benchmark terabyte- sized databases with thousands of concurrent users if you want by merely selecting such parameters for the preceding two steps.

   Figure 10.16. Benchmark Factory transaction mix properties.

   

5. Go ahead and execute the benchmark steps as shown in Figure 10.17. While the transaction mix is running, you can visually inspect the concurrent session activity using the Agent Station as shown in Figure 10.18. What's really neat is that Benchmark Factory can simulate concurrent user activity either on your PC or a pool of PCs it locates on the network.

   Figure 10.17. Benchmark Factoryexecute the benchmark.

   

   Figure 10.18. Benchmark Factorymonitor current sessions.

   

6. When the benchmark run completes, you simply review the results as shown in Figure 10.19. That's all there is to it. Now anyone can run industry-standard database benchmarks.

   Figure 10.19. Benchmark Factoryreview the results.