Database Configuration Change Impact Assessment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Business users are reluctant to adopt software patches or upgrades due to concerns about potential performance issues in mission-critical enterprise applications, leading to missed opportunities for vendors and users.
Innovation Solution
Tools and techniques are developed to assess the impact of proposed configuration changes in a database environment by recording and replaying transactions in a test database before and after the change, measuring performance indicators such as SQL performance, CPU usage, and memory usage to ensure that the change will not adversely affect performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If software patches or upgrades are applied to improve system performance and fix bugs, then system functionality and reliability are improved, but users risk system downtime and performance degradation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by recording production transactions before applying patches or upgrades, then replaying them in a test environment to predict performance impact. This allows users to assess risks before actual deployment, preventing unwanted system downtime and performance degradation while still enabling reliability improvements.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copy of the production environment by recording transactions and replaying them in a test database. This copy allows safe evaluation of patch impacts without affecting the actual production system, enabling users to verify reliability improvements before applying them to live systems.
2Adaptability or versatility
If configuration changes are made to enhance system functionality, then new features and performance improvements are achieved, but users face uncertainty about impact on existing operations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback by measuring performance indicators during transaction replay in the test environment, comparing results before and after configuration changes. This provides users with concrete performance impact information, reducing uncertainty about functionality changes while maintaining adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary performance assessment by replaying transactions with proposed configuration changes before actual deployment. This preliminary action provides users with performance impact information in advance, enabling informed decisions about adopting new functionality.
3Stability of the object's composition
If users maintain existing stable configurations to avoid system disruptions, then system stability is maintained, but opportunities for performance optimization and bug fixes are lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables users to maintain stability by performing preliminary performance assessment through transaction replay before applying any configuration changes. This ensures that performance optimization opportunities can be pursued only after verifying they will not disrupt system stability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses a copied test environment to evaluate performance optimization opportunities without affecting production system stability. Users can assess productivity improvements in the copy before applying changes to the stable production system.
Data Source
AI summary
Tools and techniques for providing an assessment of a prospective configuration change in a production database environment. In some cases, tools may record a series of transactions in a production database. This set of transactions can then be replayed by the tools in a test database, both before and after the configuration change has been performed. The performance of the workload in this test environment can be measured under both conditions (pre-change and post-change) to provide insight into a performance impact that might result from implementing the configuration change in the production environment.