The new version of Performance Comparer for Firebird is available. In this new version, the parsing of huge trace files is much faster, along with some other small changes and fixes which are listed in the changelog.txt. This is the first non-beta version.
FBPC is a free tool that can help people to compare the performance between two Firebird versions, or even between the same Firebird version but with different configurations in firebird.conf
The new (beta) release of the Performance Comparer for Firebird tool fixes some small glitches and improves the usability. The Firebird Embedded used by the tool was also updated to the official Firebird 5.0 release. More details about the changes can be found in the ChangeLog.txt.
A video (recorded from a recent Live, in Portuguese) is now available on YouTube, showing how to use the tool. Of course, the previous instructions (in English) are still included in the distribution.
Download the new version and get to know how your queries will behave in Firebird 5 (or any version of Firebird), before migrating your customers.
In my two presentations at the 20th Firebird Developers Day, I introduced firsthand the tool I created to help compare the performance between two Firebird servers (>= 2.5) in an easy and visual way.
This tool actually helped to detect a performance regression in Firebird 5 beta, which was resolved after I reported it to the core developers. The intention is to identify optimizer regressions or low performance issues in Firebird itself, or even the breaking of SQL commands due to new reserved words or syntax restrictions.
I’m making version 1.0 beta available for anyone interested. It’s a version that so far has been tested only by me, so it may and probably does have some bugs.
The FBPC runs on Windows and internally uses Firebird 5 RC1 embedded to store the tests and their results. When you run the application for the first time, it will display instructions on how to use it.
In summary, it helps you create a trace.conf to capture SQL commands executed on a Firebird server 2.5 or higher in a production environment. Then, the tool parses the file and collect the statements, allowing you to run them in a controlled environment of servers, specifying test rounds where the execution time between server1 and server2 is compared and displayed in an intuitive and visual way, enabling you to detect regressions or even commands that could not be executed due to new reserved words or syntax restrictions imposed in new versions of the DBMS.
