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Hannah Smalltree, Editorial Director
For each of the data warehouse and business intelligence implementations that I've been involved in were finalized in a similar fashion. The load testing for the data warehouses, databases, ETLs, etc, have been done using simple monitoring tools and some script code for seeding data, test setup, and execution. I've not seen many large commercial tools used in that space, unless it was a database or network monitoring tool that the company already had. Performance testing the data warehouse is typically fairly straightforward. It has more to do with the data than it does the tools you're using.
For the business intelligence side of the project, running canned reports, ad hoc reporting, multi-user load, is where you tend to find some of the more traditional performance testing tools come into play. This testing tends to look similar to other performance testing efforts. The big tool vendors HP, IBM, Microsoft and the like, all have a place based on the technologies your business intelligence solution leverages. Open source tools like JMeter and OpenSTA, can also be used for some aspects of the testing depending on complexity and/or technology constraints.
I've found with business intelligence testing, that the data still has a lot to do with your scenarios. So while you're likely adding an element of load, you're still likely going to be doing a lot of data staging/seeding. Any tool that is compatible with your business intelligence interface is likely to do the trick for you.
This was first published in October 2009