Benchmark Factory for Database 8.1 - User Guide

Licensing

The Benchmark Factory Licensing dialog allows you to enter a new license key or modify a license.

To extend a trial, purchase a license, or find answers to your licensing questions, contact Quest at https://www.quest.com/contact.

Licenses Determine Feature Availability

The features available, including the ability to connect to certain types of databases, are determined by the license or licenses currently active in Benchmark Factory. Benchmark Factory supports multiple licenses. If multiple licenses are active, for example one from a Toad for Oracle Edition and one from a Toad for SQL Server Edition, multiple license-dependent features are enabled.

Important: If you delete an active Trial key from the Licensing dialog, any features enabled by the Trial key and not included in one of the remaining active licenses will be disabled.

Toad Edition Licenses

When Benchmark Factory is licensed as part of a Toad Edition (such as a Toad for Oracle Edition), the Toad Edition license is listed in the Benchmark Factory Licensing dialog. The license enables features applicable to the Toad Edition. Deleting the license will disable features enabled by the license and not supported by another currently-active license.

Licensing Benchmark Factory

To enter your license key

1. Select Help | Licensing. The Licensing dialog opens and, if applicable, displays a list of licenses for Benchmark Factory.
2. To enter a new license, click Add and enter the license key, as well as the site message included with the license key.
3. To modify a license, select the license to update and click Modify. Then update the key and site message.
4. If Benchmark Factory was activated by a Toad Edition license, the Toad license is listed. Select the license and click Modify to update it.
5. To contact Quest Software to extend a trial, select the trial license and click Extend Trial.

6. To visit the Quest Software Web site and purchase a license, select the trial license and click Purchase. Or visit https://www.quest.com/buy/.

To delete a license key

1. In the Licensing dialog, select the key to delete and click Delete License.

   Important: If you delete a license key, any features enabled by that license and not supported by another currently-active license are disabled

Upgrade an Earlier-Version License Key

License keys compatible with Benchmark Factory 5.8.1 (or earlier) are no longer supported.

To upgrade your license key

1. Go to Help | Licensing to find your license number in your current version of Benchmark Factory. If not explicitly listed, it may be included as part of the Site Message associated with your key.

   Example: ACCOUNTNAME-nnn-nnn-nnn

2. Then go to the License Key Upgrade page: http://license.quest.com/upgrade.
3. Enter your e-mail address and your existing license number, and then follow the prompts.

If you need help finding your license number or an upgrade key, please contact the License Administration team: https://support.quest.com/licensing-assistance.

Adding Virtual Users

Benchmark Factory comes with 100 virtual users by default.  Benchmark Factory Freeware comes with 20 virtual users. Virtual users simulate the load against the system-under-test. Each virtual user is a separate thread, acting independently of the other virtual users, with its own connection to the system-under-test. Each virtual user tracks its own statistics that includes transaction times and the number of times a transaction executes.

Benchmark Factory can scale up to an unlimited number of concurrent load users. Additional virtual users allow you to:

• Accurately determine system throughput and capacity for database systems
• Simulate thousands of concurrent users with a minimal amount of hardware
• Find applications that do not scale well with an increase in the number of users
• Find breaking points, weak links, or bottlenecks of a system
• Quantify application or server performance with realistic workloads

To request additional concurrent load users, please contact your Quest Software representative, or visit the Benchmark Factory Web site.

Overview of Benchmark Factory

About Benchmark Factory

Benchmark Factory is a database performance and code scalability testing tool that simulates users and transactions on the database and replays production workload in non-production environments. With Benchmark Factory developers, DBAs, and QA teams can validate that their databases will scale as user loads increase, application changes are made, and platform changes are implemented.

Benchmark Factory is available for Oracle®, SQL Server®, IBM® DB2®, SAP®, MySQL, and other databases via ODBC connectivity.

What You Can Do With Benchmark Factory

Benchmark Factory places enormous stress on a database system, which is typically hard to achieve in a standard testing environment. A system typically breaks under extreme load. By identifying system capacity and performance bottlenecks before they occur, Benchmark Factory facilitates proactive testing, which in turn reduces downtime, development costs, and potential loss of revenue.

Benchmark Factory allows you to:

• Determine system throughput and capacity for database systems
• Simulate thousands of concurrent users with a minimal amount of hardware
• Find applications that do not scale well with an increase in the number of users
• Find breaking points, weak links, or bottlenecks of a system
• Quantify application or server performance