database performance: test setup: Databases
Each database is installed over a clean new image of the operating system.
When given the choice, we installed the latest release available.
We then create a test database called 'test' (if it does not exist already), and where applicable a user (also named test) to access this instance.
Altough most of the package installation instructions are Fedora specific (using yum and chkconfig), it should be pretty easy to adapt them to other package management systems, and the database specific setup steps should be more or less indepedant of the operating system and distribution used.
We also install the client software to be able to connect locally, although this is not strictly necessary it does not affect performance and it is a lot more practical for testing the initial setup.
The correct version of the JDBC driver is bundled with the test code.
The instructions below are included for completeness and are not meant to be used as examples, the resulting installation should be "as default as can be".
Most databases support multiple JDBC driver types. We focused on JDBC 3, the "Pure Java Driver for Database Middleware" because it is a platform independent, pure Java network protocol.
