On Workload Characterization of Relational Database Environments

Abstract

As relational database systems become increasingly popular, there is a clear need to better understand the workload so systems can be designed or tuned more effectively. A REIational Database Workload AnalyzeR (REDWAR) is developed to characterize the workload in a DB2 environment. This is applied to study a production DB2 system where an SQL trace for a two hour interval and an image copy of the database catalog were obtained. The results of the workload study are summarized. Here we focus on the structure and complexity of SQL statements, the makeup and run-time behavior of transactions/queries, and the composition of relations and views. This provides the necessary information needed to build a benchmark workload to study database design trade-offs.