Testing on a budget: integrating e-business certification into the Oracle DBMS testing

ABSTRACT

Testing complex software is one of the most challenging steps in the software development lifecycle. Several testing methods are usually used from the time the subject software component is ready for testing until the complete system where the software component operates is released for distribution. In this paper, we describe one of the methods used to test the SQL Engine of the Oracle database management system (DBMS). This process has been designed to track, detect and report quality problems along with detailed metrics that make it easier to find the root cause of different types of regressions (failures, result correctness, and performance). The test process has been built on top of a framework that is extensible so that any schema and SQL workload can be plugged into the framework. The process described here is currently part of the Oracle DBMS test process.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.4 Systems
          Subjects: Query processing

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging

  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.3 Languages

          Nouns: SQL
      H.2.4 Systems

          Nouns: ORACLE

General Terms:
Design, Performance, Reliability

Keywords:
DBMS, Oracle, SQL, query optimizer, test, workload