Question

Currently doing a test plan for a system. May I know what are the ways to test a database? How do I test whether the database is a good database? And how do I stress test a database?

Answer 1

As far as stress-testing, you can start with MySQL’s load-testing tool, called mysqlslap. See documentation for details.

As for the rest, any type of functional testing is a validation step that tests that your system does things it’s supposed to do, and doesn’t do things it’s not supposed to do.

For example:

• Do the tables exist, with columns as you expect them to?
• Are tables designed in normal form, unless there are specific exception cases?
• Do the data types of these columns allow the range of values you need to store?
• Do the constraints disallow invalid data where appropriate, e.g. unique constraints, foreign key constraints, check constraints
• If you use stored procedures, can you test that they do what you expect, given various parameter values, and given various database starting states?
• If you have developed data access objects (DAOs), can you unit-test that code to make sure it does what you intend with various inputs and given various database starting states?

You can also test for performance, and use this as a guide for optimizing the database. See my presentation MENTOR Your Indexes.

The first step for designing a Quality Control (QC) plan is to define the requirements, and make sure these requirements can be tested for. That is, state them in terms of things that can be measured.

“Good” cannot be measured.