ESTIMATING IMPACT OF CONFIGURATION CHANGES

• US 20100257513A1
• Filed: 04/03/2009
• Published: 10/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/03/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Arora, Praveen, Thirumalai, Govindarajan
• Granted Patent: US 8,418,150 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/134
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3428 Benchmarking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2365 Ensuring data consistency and integrity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

Tools and techniques for providing an assessment of a prospective configuration change in a production database environment. In some cases, tools may record a series of transactions in a production database. This set of transactions can then be replayed by the tools in a test database, both before and after the configuration change has been performed. The performance of the workload in this test environment can be measured under both conditions (pre-change and post-change) to provide insight into a performance impact that might result from implementing the configuration change in the production environment.

Claims

1. A method of estimating an impact of a software patch in a database environment, the method comprising:

providing a production database in a production environment;

performing, with an enterprise application, a plurality of transactions to generate a production dataset in the production database;

recording, in the production database, the plurality of transactions with a database application testing program;

providing a first test database in a first test environment, the first test environment having a configuration similar to the production environment;

replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database within the first test environment to produce a first test dataset;

measuring a first set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database, the first set of one or more performance indicators comprising at least one performance indicator other than structured query language (“

SQL”

) performance; and

providing a second test database in a modified test environment, the modified test environment having been modified from the first test environment by applying a software patch to at least one component of the first test environment;

replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database within the modified test environment to produce a second test dataset;

measuring a second set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database, the second set of one or more performance indicators comprising at least one performance indicator other than SQL performance;

comparing one or performance indicators in the first set of performance indicators with one or more performance indicators in the second set of performance indicators;

estimating an impact of applying the software patch to the production environment based at least in part on replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and the second test database and on a comparison of one or more performance indicators in the first set of performance indicators with one or more performance indicators in the second set of performance indicators.

2. A method of estimating an impact of a configuration change in a database environment, the method comprising:

recording, in a first database, a plurality of transactions;

replaying the plurality of transactions in at least one test database;

measuring at least one set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the at least one test database, each set of one or more performance indicators comprising at least one performance indicator other than structured query language (“

SQL”

) performance;

estimating an impact of a configuration change in a production database environment based at least in part on the at least one set of one or more performance indicators.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein:

the at least on test database is a plurality of test databases comprising a first test database and a second test database;

replaying the plurality of transactions comprises replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database;

measuring at least one set of one or more performance indicators comprises measuring a first set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and measuring a second set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database; and

estimating an impact of a configuration change in a production database comprises comparing one or more performance indicators in the first set of performance indicators with one or more performance indicators in the second set of performance indicators.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the production database environment comprises the first database.

5. A method of estimating an impact of a configuration change in a database environment, the method comprising:

recording, in a production database in a production environment, a plurality of transactions;

providing a first test database in a first test environment;

replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database within the first test environment to produce a first test dataset;

providing a second test database in a modified test environment;

replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database within the modified test environment to produce a second test dataset; and

estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment based at least in part on replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and the second test database.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing an output to a user, the output indicating an estimate of the impact of the configuration change in the production environment.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the first test database and the second test database are the same database.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein providing a second test database in a modified test environment comprises modifying a configuration of the first test environment to model the configuration change in the production environment.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein modifying a configuration of the first test environment comprises modifying a relational database management system that manages the first test database.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein modifying a relational database management system comprises upgrading the relational database management system from an older version to a newer version.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein modifying a relational database management system comprises modifying one or more operating parameters of the relational database management system.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein modifying a relational database management system comprises implementing the relational database management system in a clustered configuration.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein modifying a configuration of the first test environment comprises modifying an operating system of a computer system on which the first test database is located.

14. The method of claim 8, wherein modifying a configuration of the first test environment comprises modifying a hardware configuration of a computer system on which the first test database is located.

15. The method of claim 8, wherein modifying a configuration of the first test environment comprises modifying an enterprise application that stores data in the first test database.

16. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

measuring a first set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database; and

measuring a second set of one or more performance indicators associated with replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment comprises comparing one or more performance indicators in the first set of one or more performance indicators with a corresponding one or more indicators in the second set of one or more performance indicators.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the first set of one or more performance indicators and the second set of one or more performance indicators each comprise at least one performance indicator from the group consisting of transactions per second, processor utilization, memory usage, memory swapping, and number of structured query language code executions.

19. The method of claim 5, wherein:

replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database comprises executing a first set of one or more SQL statements;

replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database comprises executing a second set of one or more SQL statements; and

estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment comprises comparing one or more SQL statements in the first set of one or more SQL statements with one or more SQL statements in the second set of one or more SQL statements.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment comprises comparing at least a portion of the first test dataset in the first test database with at least a portion of the second test dataset in the second test database.

21. The method of claim 5, wherein recording a plurality of transactions comprises recording the plurality of transactions using a database application testing program.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein replaying the plurality of transactions comprises replaying the plurality of transactions using the database application testing program.

23. A computer system for measuring an impact of a configuration change in a database environment, the system comprising:

at least one processor; and

a computer readable storage medium having encoded thereon a set of instructions executable by one or more of the at least one processor to perform one or more operations, the set of instructions comprising;

instructions for recording, in a production database in a production environment, a plurality of transactions;

instructions for replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database within the first test environment to produce a first test dataset;

instructions for replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database within the modified test environment to produce a second test dataset; and

instructions for estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment based at least in part on replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and the second test database.

24. An apparatus comprising:

a computer readable storage medium having encoded thereon a set of instructions executable by a computer system to perform one or more operations, the set of instructions comprising;

instructions for recording, in a production database in a production environment, a plurality of transactions;

instructions for replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database within the first test environment to produce a first test dataset;

instructions for replaying the plurality of transactions in the second test database within the modified test environment to produce a second test dataset; and

instructions for estimating an impact of a configuration change in the production environment based at least in part on replaying the plurality of transactions in the first test database and the second test database.