Using Apache JMeter to perform load testing against database

Apache JMeter is a 100% pure Java desktop application designed to load test functional
behavior and measure performance. It was originally designed for testing Web Applications but
has since expanded to other test functions.

Apache JMeter may be used to test performance both on static and dynamic resources (files,
Servlets, Perl scripts, Java Objects, Data Bases and Queries, FTP Servers and more). It can be
used to simulate a heavy load on a server, network or object to test its strength or to analyze
overall performance under different load types. You can use it to make a graphical analysis of
performance or to test your server/script/object behavior under heavy concurrent load.

This tutorial will only demonstrate a simple SQL load testing example against Oracle via JDBC.

Step 1: Download Apache JMeter

The Apache JMeter is downloadable at

http://jakarta.apache.org/site/downloads/downloads_jmeter.cgi . We chose the binary version on
2.3.2 for our windows xp workstation.

Step 2: Installation

The installation could be done by extracting the downloaded zip. That’s it.

Step 3: JDBC access to oracle database

To conduct the load testing against oracle database, setting up JDBC connection is required. It’s
also easy to do that: copying ojdbc14.jar at $ORACLE_HOME/jdbc/lib to folder lib under
Apache JMeter installation destination.

Step 4: Start Apache JMeter

Launching batch file jmeter.bat in folder bin will start Apache JMeter as following.

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Step 5: Adding new “Thread Group”

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For my testing example, I had the following configuration about “Thread Group”

 Number of Threads(users): 10
 Ramp-Up Period (in seconds): 1
 Loop Count: 10

Step 6: Adding JDBC connection

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The JDBC setting for this example are:

 Database URL: jdbc:oracle:thin:@your_db_server_IP:1521:jonathan

 JDBC Driver class: oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
 Username: scott
 Password: tiger

Step 7: Adding JDBC request

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In Query box, you can type any sql you want to test against oracle database.

Step 8: Adding aggregate report

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Step 9: Saving Test Plan

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Step 10: Run Testing

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In Summary

This is quite simple demo to show how to use Apache JMeter to do loading test against oracle
database via JDBC. Apache JMeter offers a way to test SQL loading and performance. By
examining above report, we have no idea to tell that throughput at 33.8/min is good or not. The
feasible way to use Apache JMeter more effectively is to perform typical sql statement on idle
time and peak time to get threshold about performance. And, those threshold will be the criteria
to evaluate further sql loading test and performance.

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