The RWP*Load Simulator (rwloadsim) has a relatively simple command interface and is primarily targeted at scripting environments, where sqlplus together with things like shell, sed, awk and other Unix tools doesn’t allow sufficient control of how to execute SQL statements or a mix of concurrently executing SQL statements.
As a simulation tool, rwloadsim has several ways to specify random values for SQL or PL/SQL with bind variables, and it can control things like frequency of execution, mix of “transactions”, several connection mechanisms including session pooling, while it also may gather run-time execution statistics such as throughput and histograms of execution times. All such statistics are stored in database tables in the repository schema to allow for reporting. The rwloadsim language is also sufficient to allow automatic generation of awr reports.
In addition to actual workload simulations, rwloadsim is a relatively powerful scripting tool. One example of such usage is that database administrators easily can create scripts, which combine execution of SQL with procedural logic. If you only use it for its scripting capabilities, there is no need for the repository database that stores execution statistics.
Some of the rwloadsim behavior is controlled via options to the executable, and the actual RWL program is specified in text files that are read by rwloadsim; several options can be set globally using start-up files. The text files are written in the rwloadsim language “rwl” (pronounced “rawl”) and has typical programming language elements such as declarations and executable code. One or more of these files are given as input to rwloadsim; they are read in sequence, and are parsed and executed. There is no separate “compile” and “execute” step as in ordinary programming languages, declarations of things like variables and procedures are stored immediately and code is executed immediately. It is also possible to include rwl files within others similar to using the @ clause in SQL*Plus or #include in C, and you can conditionally include code similar to #if in C.
Your distribution includes reference documentation in the form of manual
pages, which you read using the rwlman utility.
Without arguments, it gives a brief overview, and with an argument
it displays a manual page.
Some examples are
rwlman rwloadsim
rwlman rwl
rwlman statement
rwlman simpledeclaration
that will respectively show how to call the rwloadsim program, the overall syntax for the rwloadsim language, syntax for a statement and syntax for simple declarations such as integers.
Type the above now to get acquainted to using rwlman.
The samples shown here will gradually introduce some of the important features of rwloadsim. All samples are available in the demo sub-directory; it is recommended to copy these files to a personal directory before execution.
The first example in sample1.rwl does not interact with the database, and it shows how to declare variables and procedures, has examples of expressions, and shows how to execute a procedure.
integer a, b; # declare two integer variables
# declare a procedure that takes two arguments
procedure add(integer v1, integer v2)
integer c; # a local variable
c := v1+v2; # assign sum of arguments to c
if c>100 then # sometimes print
printline "c is larger than 100", c;
end;
end;
procedure setab()
a := uniform(0,50); # give a a random value between 0 and 50
b := uniform(50,150);
end;
integer i; # declarations can come anywhere
procedure runten()
for i := 1 .. 10 loop # do something ten times
setab;
add a,b;
end;
end;
runten; # execute the procedure
printline a,b,a-b; # print the values of a and b
You can simply execute
$ rwloadsim sample1.rwl
RWP*Load Simulator Release 2.0.1.30 Beta on Mon Aug 13 02:21:30 2018
c is larger than 100 117
c is larger than 100 159
c is larger than 100 158
c is larger than 100 127
c is larger than 100 192
5 83 -78
The sample shows some of the important concepts of rwloadsim:
The main purpose of rwloadsim is to execute SQL statements against an Oracle database, so let us show a small example of how this can be done. As the same database credentials are likely to be used for many different cases, let us first create a file that contains just a database credential. You must modify a private copy of testuser.sql (not shown here) to suit your databases requirement for things like password and tablespace and then execute it from sqlplus logged in as a DBA, which will create a user named “rwltest”. Assume this is done, you can then declare a database in rwloadsim using:
# create a default database connection called rwltest
database rwltest username "rwltest" password "{password}" default;
The keyword database starts the declaration (just like the keyword
integer starts a declaration of an integer), and the actual username
and password are entered as stings.
The keyword default marks this database as default, which means it will
be used when no database has been explicitly named.
The above is available as the file rwltest.rwl; you must modify
a private copy of it as
necessary with things like the proper connect string and password.
If you do not include the password, you will be prompted for it.
If you need to have a connect string you could e.g. use something like:
# create a default database connection called rwltest
database rwltest connect "//host/service:dedicated"
username "rwltest" password "{password}" default;
When you have created your user using sqlplus and have modified rwltest.rwl accordingly, type
rwloadsim rwltest.rwl
It should do nothing but printing a connected message.
Let us next see how SQL statements are declared and executed. You need a table like this in your schema:
create table verysimple
( a number
, b varchar2(30)
)
This can be created using the file simpletables.sql, which also creates tables very similar to the classical emp and dept tables. Next look at the file simpleinsert.rwl which contains:
# simpleinsert.rwl
integer max := 12;
# Set a default array size
# for dml using a directive
$embeddeddmlarray:5
# declare a procedure that inserts some rows
procedure doinsert()
integer i;
# declare some variables that match
# placeholders
double a;
string(30) b;
for i := 1.. max loop
# assign values to the two bind variables
a := erlang2(1);
# the next line shows that strings and
# integers can be concatenated
b := " row number "||i;
# run the insert
insert into verysimple
( a, b ) values ( :a, :b );
end ;
# and commit the transaction
commit;
end;
# actually execute the procedure
doinsert;
You can now execute this:
$ rwloadsim rwltest.rwl simpleinsert.rwl
There will be no output shown, except the banner as there are no print statements in your input files, but you can use sqlplus to actually see the result of the insert, where the first few lines might be:
SQL >select * from verysimple;
A B
---------- ------------------------------
2.18538601 row number 1
1.81184842 row number 2
2.07463075 row number 3
This example shows some important concepts of rwloadsim:
/; a . could also have been
used, just as a line ending with ; (except when using PL/SQL).
To allow for nice indentation of source files, the / or . may have
white-space in front of it.b, which is of type string(30)
shows that numbers (here the value of the integer variable i) are
implicitly converted to a string as needed.
The opposite is also the case - if you use a string value in a
numerical expression, an implicit conversion to a number (integer or
double) will be done.
These implicit conversions never result in errors, similar to the
behavior in awk.Using $useroption and/or $userswitch which are examples
of directives, you can add new
getopt style long options that provide values for variables that are
declared in the first file named with a .rwl suffix on the command line.
The following show how this can be done.
The file emp.rwl uses a $useroption:deptno directive that makes the
variable named deptno settable using a –deptno option, and it
also has a $include directive causing the database declaration file
to be included:
$include:"rwltest.rwl"
integer empno, deptno:=10, numemps:=0; $useroption:deptno
# Declare some variables, and possibly initialize them
string ename;
sql selemps # Declare a SQL statement
select empno, ename from emp where deptno=:1;
define 1 empno, 2 ename; # As it is a query, define the select list elements
bind 1 deptno; # Bind the single placeholder to a variable
array 10; # Set an array size
end;
for selemps loop # Execute a cursor loop
printline empno, ename; # print something to stdout
numemps := numemps + 1; # count the number of rows
end loop;
if numemps=0 then # If there were no rows, print a message
printline "No employees in department", deptno;
end if;
If you execute it as previously without argument, it will show employees in department 10. But due to the directive, rwloadsim will accept the long option –deptno taking an argument, so you can make a call like:
$ rwloadsim --deptno 20 emp.rwl
RWP*Load Simulator Release 3.0.0.11 Development on Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:54:17 UTC
Connected scott to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
7369 SMITH
7566 JONES
7788 SCOTT
7876 ADAMS
7902 FORD
Note that the name of the variable and the option name must be the same.
In the sample above in emp.rwl, you explicitly define the select list elements
to variables and you explicitly bind the placeholder :1 to a variable.
If these have names that are also names of declared variable,
you can enable implicit define and bind using
the directive $implicit:both as shown here:
# Get the database
$include:"rwltest.rwl"
#
integer empno, deptno:=10, numemps:=0; $useroption:deptno
# Declare some variables, and possibly initialize them
string ename;
$implicit:both
sql selemps # Declare a SQL statement
select empno, ename from emp where deptno=:deptno;
end;
for selemps loop # Execute a cursor loop
printline empno, ename; # print something to stdout
numemps := numemps + 1; # count the number of rows
end loop;
if numemps=0 then # If there were no rows, print a message
printline "No employees in department", deptno;
end if;
This code is found in emp2.rwl which you can execute just like you did emp.rwl. Implicit bind and define greatly simplifies programming.
As also shown in the simpleinsert.rwl example, you can often simply embed your sql statement directly in the code without first declaring it as a variable. This is shown in emp3.rwl with the following contents:
# Get the database
$include:"rwltest.rwl"
#
integer empno, deptno:=10, numemps:=0; $useroption:deptno
# Declare some variables, and possibly initialize them
string ename;
for
select empno, ename from emp where deptno=:deptno;
loop
printline empno, ename; # print something to stdout
numemps := numemps + 1; # count the number of rows
end loop;
if numemps=0 then # If there were no rows, print a message
printline "No employees in department", deptno;
end if;
The cursor loop above therefore consist of these parts:
forloop followed by the code to execute in the loop and terminated by endA possible call and the output is:
rwloadsim --deptno 30 emp3.rwl
RWP*Load Simulator Release 3.0.0.23 Development on Mon, 16 May 2022 14:59:30 UTC
RWL-206: warning: OCI compile environment (21.5) is different from runtime (21.3)
Connected rwltest to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
7499 ALLEN
7521 WARD
7654 MARTIN
7698 BLAKE
7844 TURNER
7900 JAMES
As shown above, you can provide input by associating variables with long options. A secondary way to achieve the same is by overwriting initializations in your rwl file using the -i or -d options for respectively integer and double variables. This approach is not only available for the first .rwl file, but for all input files. Using the simpleinsert.rwl as an example, you can e.g. do:
$ rwloadsim -i max:=100 rwltest.rwl simpleinsert.rwl
and 100 rows will be inserted into the table. The -i option (which can be repeated) is used to initialize an integer variable; there is also a -d option for double variables.
If your interest primarily is to use rwloadsim as a scripting tool, you can skip the rest of this page an go directly to SCRIPTING.md.
We have so far just looked at busy loop without think time and with a certain number of executions. Such things can be handy for filling tables, but what if you wanted run a simulation taking 10 minutes with some average think time between each execution? Doing such things is exactly what rwloadsim is created to do. The file simpleinsert2.rwl is a slightly modified version of simpleinsert.rwl, and is used to show that and also shows how procedures can take arguments:
# simpleinsert2.rwl
integer threads sum totalrows := 0;
# Set a default array size
# for dml using a directive
$embeddeddmlarray:5
# declare a procedure that inserts some rows
procedure doinsert(integer rows)
integer i;
# declare some variables that match
# placeholders
double a;
string(30) b;
totalrows += rows;
for i := 1.. rows loop
# assign values to the two bind variables
a := erlang2(1);
# the next line shows that strings and
# integers can be concatenated
b := " row number "||i;
# run the insert
insert into verysimple
( a, b ) values ( :a, :b );
end ;
# and commit the transaction
commit;
end;
There are a few important changes:
totalrows, which is declared with the
threads sum option; it will shortly be described what the purpose of
this is.doinsert at the end of the file, so no actual execution of the procedure takes place.Due to the missing execution, if you run
$ rwloadsim rwltest.rwl simpleinsert2.rwl
nothing will actually be inserted into the database. If you had included a line like
doinsert 5;
running it would have inserted 5 lines into the table.
The file runsimple.rwl has this contents:
# include the database
$include:"rwltest.rwl"
# and the procedure
$include:"simpleinsert2.rwl"
procedure someinserts()
integer rr;
for wait 0.5 stop 10 loop
rr := uniform(1,10);
doinsert rr;
end;
end;
someinserts;
printline "inserted", totalrows;
Initially, it has two $include directives which are used such that you don’t need to give a (potentially) long list of file names to rwloadsim. It works similarly to how #include does in C. Therefore, you just need to provide the name of this file to rwloadsim as shown:
$ rwloadsim runsimple.rwl
RWP*Load Simulator Release 3.0.0.11 Development on Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:51:54 UTC
Connected rwltest to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
inserted 121
The for .. loop end construct in the file runsimple.rwl is called a control loop and it shows one of the most important core features of rwloadsim, namely the possibility to execute something that simulates what end users may do. In the example shown above, there is a wait time specified at 0.5 (seconds) and a stop time specified as 10 (seconds). The implication is that the loop will execute 10s and after each execution of the loop, there will be a wait of 0.5s. Assuming the actual time taken to execute the statements of the loop is negligible compared to the 0.5s wait time, the loop will therefore execute (approximately) 20 times.
Simulating a load with just a single thread of execution is in most case far from sufficient. What if you wanted to simulate ten concurrent users (or application server threads) each concurrently running the above? You could start rwloadsim ten times in the background, simulating ten end users. But what if you want your simulation to use a session pool (often referred to as “stateless connection pool”) rather than having ten individual dedicated connections to the database? Ability to do this is another very important feature of rwloadsim.
We are now using a somewhat modified version of the last file above, runsimple2.rwl:
$include:"rwltest.rwl"
$include:"simpleinsert2.rwl"
procedure someinserts()
integer rr;
for wait 0.5 stop 10 loop
rr := uniform(1,10);
doinsert rr;
end;
end;
run
threads 10
someinserts;
end;
end;
printline "inserted", totalrows;
The procedure is declared in the same way, but in stead of just calling the procedure, we use the run .. threads .. end construct which is similar to starting things in the background using & in the shell.
We can now execute:
$ rwloadsim runsimple2.rwl
RWP*Load Simulator Release 3.0.0.11 Development on Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:52:59 UTC
Connected rwltest to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
inserted 1082
What happens at the run command in the third file is the following:
a, rr, etc; these variables are destroyed when the threads
terminate.totalrows variable,
but after execution of threads, the actual value of the contents from
each thread is added to the variable in the main thread; this behavior
is what threads sum in simpleinsert2.rwl does.totalrows variables, the
grand total can be printed after the threads have finished.In the example above, we were using the existing database called “rwltest”, which is a dedicated connection. This implies each worker thread (the ten threads above) all will acquire their own dedicated connection as well. You would normally want to use a session pool in stead. In rwloadsim this can be achieved by a slightly different database declaration. Take a look at rwltest2.rwl with the following contents. You must provide your password and if you need a connect string, you must add it as described previously.
# Use a dedicated connection as default:
database rwltest username "rwltest" password "{password}" default;
# And declare another database as pooled:
database rwlpool username "rwltest" password "{password}" sessionpool 1..4;
When giving this file as input to rwloadsim, you declare two databases; one is the same we have used above, the second one named “rwlpool” really is a session pool with a variable pool-size between 1 and 4. Note that this second database does not have the default keyword, so it must be explicitly named when you want to use it. Now, finally take a look at runsimple3.rwl with this contents:
$include:"rwltest2.rwl"
$include:"simpleinsert2.rwl"
integer exectime := 60; # default 1 min execution time
$useroption:exectime
integer numthreads := 10; # default 10 threads
$useroption:numthreads
procedure someinserts()
integer rr;
for wait erlang2(0.02) stop exectime loop
rr := uniform(1,10);
doinsert rr;
end;
end;
run
threads numthreads at rwlpool
someinserts;
end;
end;
printline "inserted", totalrows;
Execution will by default run for just over a minute with a default of ten threads. You can change these on the command line, and a possible execution is:
$ rwloadsim runsimple3.rwl --numthreads=15
RWP*Load Simulator Release 3.0.0.11 Development on Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:47:39 UTC
Connected rwltest to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
Created rwlpool as session pool (1..4) to:
Oracle Database 21c Enterprise Edition Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
inserted 228989
Some comments about this:
top on your database server, you will see
four dedicated connections being active; these four are
the four connections from the session pool.doinsert(), and release the
session back to the pool immediately after the call.