 |
|
Oracle testing to destruction
Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting
March 12, 2010
|
Question: What is
testing to destruction and how does it apply to Oracle technology?
Answer: When
testing the performance of Oracle databases, it is a best practice to use a
tool to hammer the database until it “breaks”. By breaking, we mean
the point at which the database throughout is seriously impaired on “hung”,
a point at which the database will not allow new transactions. See
these notes on
Oracle benchmark testing.
The most popular Oracle stress
testing tool is Oracle’s Real Application Testing (RAT) and the Quest
Benchmark factory.
Testing to destruction is a
well-known technique and the findings are critical because the DBA will then
know, a-priori, the critical bottleneck for the database, and the
transaction rate at which performance degradation occurs.
When testing to destruction it
is important to extract a representative real-world workload and avoid faked
“test cases”. See these notes on
finding the proper workload for testing your database to destruction.
For a full methodology for
testing to destruction, see the book
Oracle Tuning: The Definitive Reference.
