Database Performance Comparison Tips

[Alzhy]

DBA/Sysad Gurii,

What could I tell my DBA as far as comparing DB performance between platforms (Itanium and PARISC and even Linux?) For the PARISC/Itanium comparison -- the same disksets and database will be used. For the Linux test -- the same database will be used but Endian converted to the Linux format. All 3 Environments will use the exact same Storage Array with about the same FC Connections and storage layout.

The server environments will be "fairly" adjusted as to clock speed and CPU/Core count.

Some of you may suggest -- why not just run your applications suite against the databases? Well -- we do not have that luxury. The DBA/Us must come up with a suite of SQL/DB stress testing acitivites to fully sterss out the Database so it exposes the total interaction of the platforms memory, busses, I/O, etc.

I am thinking:

- complex SQL with calculations
- updates
- db inserts
- complex joins
- RMAN backups, extracts...?



Any thoughts?

[Rita C Workman · Accepted solution]

How about database querries.
We had a few here that were written so badly they could nearly stop a box cold on the older 10.20 version. We saw improvement going from 10.20 to 11iv1.

Try finding or creating a few really nasty querries that are either asking for too much or where statement forces full table lookups.

Just a thought,
Rita

[Tim Nelson]

I have no suggestions but I ask that you post your findings..

I would find the results very interesting..

Regards.

[Duncan Edmonstone]

I'm surprised your DBA isn't familiar with swingbench:

http://www.dominicgiles.com/swingbench.php

I'm not sure how many of those tests you list swingbench does, but it's a reasonable starting point.

Rememebr to run swingbench itself as a client on the same platform for all tests, otherwise you'll be skewing your tests by testing how good the Java stack is on each system as well...

HTH

Duncan