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Category: Testing

Creating Test Data in Python via Faker

Published 2025-11-18 by Kevin Feasel

Brendan Tierney generates some artificial data:

A some point everyone needs some test data for their database. There area a number of ways of doing this, and in this post I’ll walk through using the Python library Faker to create some dummy test data (that kind of looks real) in my Oracle Database. I’ll have another post using the GenAI in-database feature available in the Oracle Autonomous Database. So keep an eye out for that.

Faker is one of the available libraries in Python for creating dummy/test data that kind of looks realistic.

Brendan generates some demo customer data, including an example of credit rating that allows for assignment of probability for each class.

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Regression Testing for PostgreSQL Queries

Published 2025-11-14 by Kevin Feasel

Radim Marek announces a new project:

This is where RegreSQL comes in. Rather than trying to turn SQL into something else, RegreSQL embraces “SQL as strings” reality and applies the same testing methodology PostgreSQL itself uses: regression testing. You write (or generate – continue reading) your SQL queries, provide input data, and RegreSQL verifies that future changes don’t break those expectations.

The features don’t stop there though – it tracks performance baselines, detects common query plan regressions (like sequential scans), and gives you framework for systematic experimentation with the schema changes and query change management.

Read on to learn more about how it works and check out the GitHub repo if you’re interested.

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Testing in R with testthat

Published 2025-09-26 by Kevin Feasel

Aida Gjoka writes a test:

Testing is an important step when developing code in R or any other language. If you are a Python user, you can consider reading our previous blogs in pytest. Writing tests helps us make sure that the code is working as expected. In the R ecosystem, the testthat package is one of the most used frameworks. In this blog we will explore some of the main properties of {testthat} highlighting some of the most useful functions with some examples.

Read on to see how it works. This isn’t a mocking library, but rather an assertions-based testing library. And near the end, Aida includes an extra library that helps with plot testing.

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Worst-Case Testing for Direct Lake Semantic Models

Published 2025-09-02 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb updates a prior post:

Two years ago I wrote a detailed post on how to do performance testing for Direct Lake semantic models. In that post I talked about how important it is to run worst-case scenario tests to see how your model performs when there is no model data present in memory, and how it was possible to clear all the data held in memory by doing a full refresh of the semantic model. Recently, however, a long-awaited performance improvement for Direct Lake has been released which means a full semantic model refresh may no longer page all data out of memory – which is great, but which also makes running performance tests a bit more complicated.

Read on to learn more about the improvement as well as how you can still perform your performance testing.

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Power BI Performance Load Testing in VS Code

Published 2025-07-30 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers wraps up a series on Power BI performance load testing:

This is the final part of my blog series for Power BI Performance testing, where I will finally run the Power BI Performance Load testing using Visual Studio Code.

In this blog post I will show you how I set up the test, run the test and view the outputs from the performance testing.

Read on for that, as well as links to the prior posts if you’re missing them.

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Building a Vector Data Demo Database for SQL Server 2025

Published 2025-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Yun has a new demo database:

Today, I have the honor and pleasure of debuting a new presentation for MSSQLTips: A Practical Introduction to Vector Search in SQL Server 2025 (you can watch the recording here too). To accompany that new presentation, I opted to create a new demo database instead of retrofitting one of my existing demo databases. And I’m sharing it with you so you don’t have to go through the headache of taking an existing database and creating vector embeddings.

Click through for Andy’s demo database, which is approximately 16 GB in size, so not a tiny one.

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Building a Test Bed for Page Latch Waits

Published 2025-07-28 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Poche generates some test data:

I’ve already posted a blog on page latch waits and some of the ways to minimize them, but I wanted to add some more on the issue. I wanted to test out some strategies to see how effective they are.

Setting up tests can be very difficult in some cases, and this attempt encountered a very unusual problem. At the risk of delaying the intended results, I wanted to point this out. It’s both interesting and frustrating to work with SQL Server for 20 years and run into new problems.

Read on to see what Jared tried, some interesting consequences, and a small fix that enabled a big problem.

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Building out a PBIReport.json File for Power BI Performance Load Testing

Published 2025-07-23 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers continues a series on Power BI performance load testing:

I am going to be using Visual Studio Code to edit the PBIReport.JSON.

It is free to download and use, it works on any device.

And most importantly it will also show you errors in the JSON file. This can help when there are potential issues.

For the test I will be putting in the following details below into the PBIReport.JSON

Click through for the process, which is fairly complex all things considered.

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