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(mysql.info)Custom Benchmarks

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Using Your Own Benchmarks
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You should definitely benchmark your application and database to find
out where the bottlenecks are.  By fixing it (or by replacing the
bottleneck with a 'dummy module') you can then easily identify the next
bottleneck (and so on).  Even if the overall performance for your
application is sufficient, 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. Note: MySQL Benchmarks. 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 is
really the fastest solution for you.

It is very common that some problems only occur 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 every one of these cases so far, it has been problems with
basic design (table scans are NOT good at high load) or OS/Library
issues. Most of this would be a *LOT* easier to fix if the systems were
not already 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, and it is available at:
`http://www.mysql.com/Downloads/super-smack/super-smack-1.0.tar.gz'.
As the name suggests, it can bring your system down to its knees if you
ask it, so make sure to use it only on your development systems.