Swingbench 2.3 should be ready shortly features a new tool called bmcompare which allows you to compare runs of benchmarks... Its pretty simply currently but I like it. Its simplifies the job of brining all of the data together. It will be especially useful for some of the users of swingbench how use swingbench as a regression test tool.

If you haven't tried this tool out I strongly recomend you pop over here. Its a massive step forward for database developers/DBA who really have felt a little neglected by Oracle over the last few years. I've had countless complaints about how SQLPlus/vi/notepad are still used by many as their development tools of choice and how it really isn't good enough. Well I've know about th tool for a while now and have had to keep quite but Im glad the cats out of the bag and its got such positive reviews... especially because of its price... free.

It features much of the functionality you'd expect in a top end development tool plus features that many of its competitors charge top dollar for. The best piece of news is that its an extensible framework and plugins have started to pop up all of the place... One of my particular favourites is at fourthelephant. Perhaps a little over the top for a text man like myself but I appreciate the work that must have gone into it.

They've inspired me to think about putting one together myself... The API is pretty simple and so it shouldn't be too taxing.... Any ideas? drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

I've been putting the final touches on the 2.3 release of swingbench. So far the features that have made it in are

• TimesTen support


• Timer support. This allows you to run the benchmark for a given time


• User selectable timings i.e. measurements in seconds, centiseconds, millseconds, microseconds etc.


• Code modification to support 1.5

Im still also hoping to include a utility that will provide side by side comparison of benchmark runs. For example this will allow you to run six benchmarks and compare the differences between each one. So you could increase the user count by 50 percent each run and then determine what difference this makes to the server. It will be pretty simple at first but Im hoping it will become more sophisticated over time.

Things that aren't likely to make it but will be in 2.4

• Data warehosuing benchmark


• Update to clusteroverview