{"id":865,"date":"2010-05-06T09:21:47","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T13:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webperformanceinc.com\/load_testing\/blog\/?p=865"},"modified":"2010-05-11T16:53:31","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T20:53:31","slug":"load-testing-tips-for-database-administrators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2010\/05\/load-testing-tips-for-database-administrators\/","title":{"rendered":"Load Testing tips for Database Administrators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly every useful web application is backed by some sort of database &#8211; usually a relational database. Many database administrators (DBAs) have never participated in a load-testing campaign and are sometimes even considered tangential to the load testing process.<\/p>\n<p>However, your DBA is a crucial part of the load-testing team. In addition to the obvious skills of database performance analysis and tuning, the DBA brings other advantages to the project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>insight into how the application interacts with the database that may not be obvious from the perspective of other team members<\/li>\n<li>ability to quickly backup and restore various database snapshots to increase consistency in the testing effort<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is one disadvantage: If your DBA is involved in the testing, it is a lot harder to blame them when things go wrong!  (and we never pass on a chance to give our DBAs a hard time <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/webperformance.com\/images\/blog\/smiley1.gif\" alt=\"wink\" \/>)<\/p>\n<p>This quote from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.databasejournal.com\/features\/db2\/article.php\/3876931\">Why IBM DB2 DBAs Love Load Testing<\/a> illustrates one reason we love working with customers who get their DBAs involved with the load testing process:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;DBAs prefer to be proactive and deal with potential issues before they become production nightmares.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What should a DBA be looking for during a load test? Here are the key issues to be watching for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>deadlocks<\/li>\n<li>timeouts<\/li>\n<li>hot spots<\/li>\n<li>sub-optimal object definitions<\/li>\n<li>sub-optimal index and SQL<\/li>\n<li>unexpected table growth<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.databasejournal.com\/features\/db2\/article.php\/3876931\">article<\/a> I referenced above has a DB2-specific title, but actually applies equally well to most web-based systems. I recommend passing it on to your DBAs when you invite them to your next load testing project.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Merrill, Chief Engineer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly every useful web application is backed by some sort of database &#8211; usually a relational database. Many database administrators (DBAs) have never participated in a load-testing campaign and are sometimes even considered tangential to the load testing process.<br \/>\nHowever, your DBA is a crucial part of the load-testing team. In addition to the obvious skills of database performance analysis and tuning, the DBA brings other advantages to the project:<\/p>\n<p>insight into how the application interacts with the database that may not be obvious from the perspective of other team members<br \/>\nability to quickly backup and restore various database snapshots to increase consistency &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2010\/05\/load-testing-tips-for-database-administrators\/\">Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-load-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":894,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}