How do you simulate frequent database activity for realistic testing?

Question

I'm building a web app against a database where a small number of records (about 5000) are active at the same time. Each active working record probably experiences 50-300 changes by 30 users over a 4 hour period ... which is thousands of changes per minute.

Because our testing environment is so static, testing is not realistic, and some issues do not arise until we hit the production database.

I had the idea to Run Profiler, collect the DML statements, then replay them on the test server while debugging the app ... Assuming I can replay them in the same time intervals as the original was run. But even this wouldn't be a valid test, since tester changes could corrupt future DML statements being replayed.

Does anybody know how to simulate real time database changes for realistic testing?

Thanks.

BTW-Our problems are not concurrency issues.

Answer 1

Maybe this Selenium-based service is what you need: browsermob

Few people recommended it.

And yes, this is not an ad :)

Answer 2

Perhaps use something along the lines of a database stress-testing tool like the mysqlslap load-emulator. Here's a link explaining use-cases and specific examples.