MySQL Reference Manual :: 7.1.5 Using Your Own Benchmarks

You should definitely benchmark your application and database to find out where the bottlenecks are. By fixing a bottleneck (or by replacing it with a ``dummy module''), you can then easily identify the next bottleneck. Even if the overall performance for your application currently is acceptable, you should at least make a plan for each bottleneck, and decide how to solve it if someday you really need the extra performance.

For an example of portable benchmark programs, look at the MySQL benchmark suite. See Section 7.1.4, “The MySQL Benchmark Suite”. You can take any program from this suite and modify it for your needs. By doing this, you can try different solutions to your problem and test which really is fastest for you.

Another free benchmark suite is the Open Source Database Benchmark, available at http://osdb.sourceforge.net/.

It is very common for a problem to occur only when the system is very heavily loaded. We have had many customers who contact us when they have a (tested) system in production and have encountered load problems. In most cases, performance problems turn out to be due to issues of basic database design (for example, table scans are not good at high load) or problems with the operating system or libraries. Most of the time, these problems would be a lot easier to fix if the systems were not in production.

To avoid problems like this, you should put some effort into benchmarking your whole application under the worst possible load! You can use Super Smack for this. It is available at http://jeremy.zawodny.com/mysql/super-smack/. As the name suggests, it can bring a system to its knees if you ask it, so make sure to use it only on your development systems.