SwingBench

First time I have seen that tool a few years ago and I was really surprise how useful it was. Now I have come back to it and a new version (release 2.3) in my opinion is very mature and can be used for many various performance tests.
Let me present show main features:

• Few different benchmark test
  
  • OLTP Order Entry PL/SQL version
  • OLTP Order Entry Java version
  • OLTP Calling Circle
  • Stress test
  • DSS Sales History
  • Custom
  
  


• Possible outputs
  
  • Transaction per minute
  • Transaction Response time
  • DML operation per minute
  
  
  
  
• Many configuration options ex:
  
  • Number of concurrent users
  • Min and max delay time between transactions
  • Logon delays
  • Using of connection pooling
  
  
  
  
• Distributed client coordinator
  

All features are described on Dominic Giles (author) homepage in documentation section. This document describe version 2.2 and a newest version is 2.3 and some additional configuration possibilities has been added from XML to GUI.

There are a lot of possible configurations and tests covered by SwingBench. Combining a customer defined transactions in tool with application knowledge SwingBench can be used as a small brother of Oracle Real Application Testing – of course it required much more work to define a workload but it is for free.

How to use it – it is very simple please take a look on my quick start guide.

1. Download a package
2. Unzip into target directory – ex. c:\SwingBench
3. Edit a SwingBenchenv.bat file – only path below should be changed
   
   REM Set the following to reflect the root directory of your Java installation
   
   set JAVAHOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_07
   
   REM Set the following to the directory where you installed swingbench
   
   set SWINGHOME=C:\swingbench
   
   REM Set the following to the location of your TimesTen install (optional)
   
   set TTHOME=C:\TimesTen\tt70
   
   REM If you don't have the ORACLE_HOME environment variable set uncomment the following and change it to reflect your environment
   
   set ORACLE_HOME=C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\db_1


4. Go to C:\swingbench\winbin and start oewizard.bat - configuration wizard
   
   
   
   
5. Click next and choose a create schema
   
   
   
   
6. Enter a server IP, database name and sys password
   
   
   
   
7. Enter schema name and tablespace location - if you have a EE edition you can clik Use Partitioning option
   
   
   
   
8. Choose a size of demo schema using sliders
   
   
   
   
9. Confirm all settings and click Finish
   
   
   
   
10. Wizard will display a additional window with Wizard log
    
    
    
    
11. Click OK on confirmation screen
    
    
    
    
12. Click Cancel in main Wizard Window
    
    
    
    
13. You can start now a SwingBench - c:\swingbench\winbin\swingbench.bat
    
    
    
    And change a ConnectionString to proper one for your environment
    
    
14. Click Start button and enjoy a performance test
    
    
    

This is all for a first time. Now I'm trying to find a fastest way to catch up
a workload on existing database and transform it into a SwingBench tests.

I hope it help some people to test a performance of existing and future installations.

regards,
Marcin