Percentages of Rows Read by Queries as an Operational Database Quality Indicator

Trace files generated during operation of a database provide enormous amounts of information. This information varies from one DBMS to another—some databases produce more information than the others. There are many research projects which aim at analysing workloads of databases (not necessarily the trace files). Many of them work online in parallel with the usual business of a DBMS. Such approaches exclude a holistic tackling of trace files. To date, the research on offline methods had only a partial scope. In this paper we show a comprehensive method to analyse trace files off-line. The aim of this analysis is to indicate tables and queries which are not handled well in current design of the database and the application. Next, we show case-studies performed on two dissimilar database applications which show the potential of the described method.