Performance Test Best Practices

The results of a performance test can be affected by many factors. The following best practices and Best practices for using Integrity Manager can help ensure that you get the most accurate results from a performance test:

Run performance comparison tests as single-project integrity tests. This reduces the load on Integrity Manager and ensures that the recorded times are as accurate as possible.
Compare performance on two Intelligence Servers by:
1. Performing a single project test against one project, save the performance results.
2. Performing a single project test against the second project, save the performance results.
3. Comparing the two performance results in a baseline-versus-baseline test.
Performance tests should be complete before viewing results. Otherwise the increased load on the Integrity Manager machine can cause the recorded times to be increased for reasons not related to Intelligence Server performance.
Process tested reports/documents in the same formats. If you are using a baseline-versus-baseline test or a baseline-versus-project test, ensure tests have processed the reports/documents in the same formats. Execution times are not recorded for each format, only for the aggregate generation of the selected formats. Thus, comparing a baseline of SQL and graph data against a test of only SQL data is likely to give inaccurate results.
Ensure valid cache exists for testing material. On the Select Execution Settings page of the Integrity Manager Wizard, if the Use Cache setting is selected, make sure that a valid cache exists for each object to be tested. Otherwise the first execution cycle of each report takes longer than the subsequent cycles, because it must generate the cache for the other cycles to use. One way to ensure that a cache exists for each object is to run a single-project integrity test of each report before you run the performance test.
Set Concurrent Jobs to 1. On the Select Execution Settings page of the Integrity Manager Wizard, set Concurrent Jobs to 1 to run only one report or document at a time. This provides the most accurate benchmark results for that Intelligence Server.
Understand the Cycles setting. On the Select Processing Options page, the Cycles setting indicates how many times each report or document is executed. A high value for this setting can dramatically increase the execution time of your test, particularly if you are running many reports or documents, or several large reports.
Use 64-bit Integrity Manager when the comparison data is large. The default position of 64-bit Integrity Manager is under C:\Program Files (x86)\MicroStrategy\Integrity Manager called MIntMgr_64.exe. Additionally, use 64-bit Integrity Manager if you have memory issues.

Performance Test Best Practices

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