Oracle Real Application Testing A Must for Oracle Database Testing

July 2012

Database testing is an urgent need to conduct any infrastructure related change smoothly. Oracle Real Application Testing helps reduce unexpected production problems drastically, minimize testing cycle and develop more realistic database testing scenarios. This white paper discusses how Oracle Real Application Testing can help organizations to achieve database testing need for any change on the infrastructure which impacts Oracle production database.

By DUTPAL MAJI Practice Consultant , Wipro Technologies

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

Contents
Introduction............................................................................................3 Oracle Real Application Testing ........................................................3
What is Real Application Testing .................................................................. 3 Pre Requisites ................................................................................................... 6 Benefits .............................................................................................................. 6 Challenges ......................................................................................................... 7

Assessment Study .................................................................................7

Wipro in Infrastructure Testing ..................................................................... 7 POC Report ....................................................................................................... 8 Assessment of other Testing Tool .................................................................. 8

Conclusion ..............................................................................................10 Appendix.................................................................................................10

Acronym............................................................................................................ 10 References ......................................................................................................... 11 About the Author............................................................................................. 11

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

Introduction
Change in the IT Infrastructure stack is a regular affair in any organization. Normally, any change in the infrastructure would have an impact on the production database. Most of these impacts are smaller, in the line of database downtime, service interruption or flood of incidents etc. However, changes like upgrades, migrations, business growth or more to handle workload are the major worries for organizations due to their profound impact on the production system. Database testing is an urgent need to conduct any infrastructure related change smoothly. One challenge that has come up in database testing is the inability to simulate production like realistic load during testing for validating system change. Customer concerns How can more realistic testing benefit our organization and lifecycle projects? How can we gain deeper insights into actual production workloads? Solutions and techniques to improve effectiveness and efficiency of database testing? How to develop a broad approach for test covering all aspects of the change?

Customers are in greater need of best practices in database testing or suitable tool which will help them minimize risks for production systems during system change and also improve effectiveness of database testing. Oracle Real Application Testing is one of such promising tools to conduct testing on Oracle database for any infrastructure related change.

Oracle Real Application Testing

What is Real Application Testing
Oracle Real Application Testing (RAT) is a useful feature of Oracle11g which enables organizations to perform real world testing of the database. RAT is a separately licensed feature of the Oracle 11g database available only with Oracle Enterprise edition. RAT can be used to capture, replay and analyze database transactions. RAT can maintain the original transaction concurrency with time and dependencies during replay.

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

RAT consists of two components: Database Workload Replay: Captures the production workload and replays the same workload on a test environment SQL Performance Analyzer: Identifies SQL execution plan changes and performance regressions for the planned change

Database Workload Replay Customers want to identify full impact of the change. Validation through exhaustive testing is expensive and difficult to emulate. Moreover, testing success rate is low as many issues go undetected during testing. Inability to simulate production like realistic load is a major cause for low success rate of testing. Database workload replay helps to conduct a complete realistic testing as it tests on the real production load.

As Is Database Apply Patch Capture workload ftp or rcp

To Be Database Pre-process Replay workload Reporting & Analysis

Fig 1: Oracle Real Application Testing: Database Workload Replay

SQL Performance Analyzer SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) tests the impact of change on SQL query performance. SPA captures the SQL workload in production with statistics and bind variables. SPA re-executes the same production SQL queries in the test environment. SPA can predict the performance deviation of the queries and helps to tune the application queries before actual change.

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

As Is Database Capture queries Create table SQL mapping Transport

To Be Database
Import mapping table Load SQL queries to STS Create & Execute 11g STS Analysis Task Reporting & Analysis

Fig 2: Oracle Real Application Testing: SQL Performance Analyzer

Oracle Real Application Testing can be accessed through Oracle Enterprise Manager and API. Salient features of Oracles Real Application Testing:

Comprehensive DBA friendly Scalable Predictable Uses real workload

RAT provides complete coverage for entire change lifecycle RAT is very easy to configure RAT requires same effort for testing major, minor changes and for small, big database Using RAT we can foresee impact of any change No need to simulate artificial load for RAT

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

Pre Requisites
License Requirements Use of SQL Performance Analyzer and Database Replay requires the Oracle Real Application Testing licensing option. Required Patch Sets Following patch sets need to be applied on Source Database (Oracle 10.2.0.5) one-off patch 9373986 Target Database (Oracle 11.2.0.2) - one-off patch 11870615 or 13947480.

For other version of source and target, please follow the Oracle Metalink document ID 560977.1 (Real Application Testing Now Available for Earlier Releases). Note: If OEM Grid control is used for SQL Performance Analyzer with 11.2.0.2.0 database, it is recommended to apply patch number 10402264 for Database 11.2.0.2.0. Data Requirement Both the source and target database should have the identical data as of the capture time. AS IS database needs to be restored to the test environment after data masking as on the capture time. Data can be restored through user managed backup or RMAN backup or snapshot standby or export and import.

Benefits
Oracle RAT provides a host of benefits for database testing for any planed change. With Oracle Real Application Testing, customer can derive the following benefits: Improved Testing Quality: Database Workload Replay allows testing impact of a system change by replaying real world workload on the test environment before the change goes live. Provides Crystal Clear View of Performance Demarcation: RAT provides a clear demarcation of performance before and after the change. PoC clearly shows the performance difference between Oracle10g & Oracle11g. Reduced Testing Cost: RAT helps reduce the testing efforts significantly. Compared to LoadRunner, total testing time was reduced to one forth.
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Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

Faster Technology Adoption: Oracle RAT demonstrates the real change in database behaviour. RAT enhances customers confidence for technology refresh, upgrade, migration etc. Tune Changes before Implementation: RAT helps in fine tuning the change. Database Replay can be used to fine tune the expected change and test again using Database Replay. Lower Risks: Risks for any change which impacts the database is reduced as RAT can clearly shows the real database performance of AS IS (before change) and TO BE (after change) database.

Challenges
Oracle Real Application Testing comes with a few challenges like: Can be applicable for the change if the target database version is Oracle11g only Need test database with similar system configuration (CPU, memory, number of nodes, storage configuration) System performance (OS, network, storage and application) cannot be measured as the capability of RAT is limited to database only.

However, the challenges are very less compared to its benefits.

Assessment Study
Wipro in Infrastructure Testing
Wipro is a leading market player in IT infrastructure management and global IT infrastructure outsourcing. Wipro ensures guaranteed benefits to customers in terms of quality, service excellence, innovation and cost transformation. Being an industry expert, Wipro also offers infrastructure testing services to its customers to ensure smooth execution of any infrastructure related change. Wipros infrastructure testing team has conducted a proof of concept (POC) on the feasibility of using Oracle RAT as a database testing tool. A proof of concept is a realization of a certain method or idea(s) to demonstrate its feasibility or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory has the potential of being used.
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Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

POC Report
Environment The environments used for the proof of concept were:
Environment OS Version Database Version Production (Source) Red Hat Linux 4 Oracle 10.2.0.5 RAC Test Database (Target) Red Hat Linux 4 Oracle 11.2.0.2 RAC

Approach The approach followed for the proof of concept which was conducted within a period of 6 weeks consisted of the following steps: Workload was captured in the production database The same workload was replayed in a test database Reports were generated for both Capture and Replay All the reports were verified by the Wipro infrastructure testing team After analysis, the observations and recommendations on the proof of concept were documented

Result Through the proof of concept on Oracle Real Application Testing, it became crystal clear that the performance of the database was better in Oracle11g compared to Oracle10g. The PoC results show more performance benefits of the production database in Oracle11g (TO BE) compared to Oracle10g (AS IS). RAT is beneficial for testing the database if the target version of change is Oracle11g.

Assessment of other Testing Tool

Many other tools are also available in the market for Oracle database testing. Oracle RAT was compared with other tools from leading vendors for Oracle database testing. Some of these tools are: IBM InfoSphere Optim Solix EDMS HP LoadRunner

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

IBM - InfoSphere Optim

IBM built tool designed primarily for DB2 database testing Good for test data management. Database workload replay has just included in its portfolio

Solix - Enterprise Data Management Solutions (EDMS)

Beneficial for database archiving, test data management and test data masking Does not provide database replay and performance analyser options

HP - LoadRunner
Good for application performance testing to simulate load through identification of key transactions and establishing transaction concurrency Takes long time to understand application usage, identify key transactions and generate workload

All these tools mentioned above can be used for Oracle Database testing. A comparative study of these tools with Oracle RAT is shown below.
Analysis of Oracle Database Testing Tools Tools Measurement Criteria Workload Replay Performance Analyzer Test Data Management Data Masking Oracle RAT Matured Matured NA NA IBM Optim Just Released NA Matured Matured Good for DB2 database testing. Useful for workload replay, test data management and data masking. Complex configuration, beginner in Database Replay Yes 9 Solix EDMS NA NA Matured Matured HP LoadRunner NA Matured NA NA Good for individual query performance comparison and application performance testing. Time consuming (required effort is almost 4 times more than RAT) Yes

Merit

Shows performance comparison using real database workload and queries.

Good for Subsetting & Masking the Test Data. Does not have workload replay and performance analyzer option Yes

De-Merit Need to procure License

Can be used only if target version for change is Oracle11g Yes

Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

Here the field Matured indicates an efficient tool for that specific requirement. Maturity is defined based on the cost, ease of usage, scalability, reliability, documentation, vendor support.

Conclusion
After a thorough analysis of a couple of relevant tools for database testing, RAT was identified as a potential tool for testing Oracle database for any change. The proof of concept has validated the expectation on usage of RAT as an efficient testing tool for Oracle database. Oracle RAT can be recommended as an efficient database testing tools for conducting any infrastructure related change which impacts Oracle database. RAT can clearly calibrate the performance demarcation of AS IS and TO BE databases. Overall, the Wipro infrastructure testing team has the opinion that the Oracle RAT is an effective testing tool for Oracle database with a bouquet of useful features. It is an ideal tool for enterprise wide Oracle database testing.

Appendix
Acronym
Acronym API CPU DBA EDMS IT ITS OS Description
Application Programming Interfaces Central Processing Unit Database Administrator Enterprise Data Management Solutions Information Technology Infrastructure Testing Services Operating System

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Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

PoC RAC RAT SPA TIS

Proof of Concept Real Application Cluster Real Application Testing SQL Performance Analyzer Technology Infrastructure Services

References
Oracle: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/e12253/dbr_capture.htm#CACICAAC IBM: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/optim/ Solix: http://www.solix.com/solix_enterprise_data_management_suite.htm HP: http://www8.hp.com/in/en/software-solutions/software.html?compURI=1175451 Real Application Testing Now Available for Earlier Releases [Oracle Metalink Document ID 560977.1] Using the workload capture and replay in 11G [Oracle Metalink Document ID 445116.1]

About the Author

Utpal Maji is a Practice Consultant working in the Global Infrastructure Services in Wipro. He is responsible for building and designing testing services for database solutions, consultancy and providing solutions. Utpal has 13 years of experience in IT Infrastructure Management spanning across administration and consultancy.

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Oracle Real Application Testing - A Must for Oracle Database Testing

About Wipro Technologies

Wipro is the first PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMMi Level 5 certified IT Services Company globally. Wipro provides comprehensive IT solutions and services (including Systems Integration, IS Outsourcing, Package Implementation, Software Application Development and Maintenance) and Research & Development Services (hardware and software design, development and implementation) to corporations globally. Wipros unique value proposition is further delivered through our pioneering offshore Outsourcing Model and stringent quality processes of SEI and Six Sigma.

Wipro in Infrastructure Management Services

Wipros infrastructure management services division (GIS) with its strong domain capabilities and specialized offerings such as IT 360 and Cloud Services helps businesses across the globe to transform their vision to reality. GIS is spread over the segments of Data Centre, End User Computing, Network, Cloud, Managed Security, Business Advisory & Consulting as well as System Integration with a host of offering such as Remote Infrastructure Management, Virtualization, Unified Communication, Device Management etc.

Wipro Technologies Corporate Office: Doddakannelli, Sarjapur Road, Bangalore - 560 035 Phone: +91 (80) 28440011 Fax: +91 (80) 28440256

Copyright 2012. Wipro Technologies. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission from Wipro Technologies. Specifications subject without notice. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.