NOTE: I am not the author of SLOB!
There are a host of different benchmarking tools for generating workloads on an Oracle database. For example, there are “dumb IO” generators like Orion, there are free “TPC-like” tools such as HammerDB or Swingbench and there are license-requiring full-suite applications like Quest’s Benchmark Factory.
My favourite, for reasons I will blog about another time, is Kevin Closson’s Oracle SLOB – the Silly Little Oracle Benchmark. This page contains links to all of the bits and pieces I’ve written or contributed to the SLOB project. When I say “contributed”, I’m talking about wrap-around scripts and such like, rather than anything in the core of SLOB itself, which is maintained by Kevin. Although there is one exception, because the official SLOB mascot (right) was drawn by my daughter 🙂
Why SLOB?
I could write a whole load of stuff here about the benefits of SLOB, the drawbacks of the TPC-like tools and the false sense of security that comes with using Orion, but instead I’m simply going to direct you to words of the author who covers it all better than I could:
Introducing SLOB: The Silly Little Oracle Benchmark
In short, it’s not just a tool, it’s a complete toolkit for generating I/O through an Oracle database. If you are trying to analyse the I/O capabilities of your Oracle database there simply isn’t a better tool out there.
flashdba 