Starting the test utility (lixat)

Starting the test utility (lixat)
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The LIXA project supplies a test utility you can use to perform basic tests on your LIXA environment. The command is named lixat and is located in the bin directory; use --help option to retrieve the list of the available options:

tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat --help
Usage:
  lixat [OPTION...] - LIXA test utility

Help Options:
  -?, --help                  Show help options

Application Options:
  -c, --commit                Perform a commit transaction
  -r, --rollback              Perform a rollback transaction
  -v, --version               Print package info and exit
  -b, --benchmark             Perform benchmark execution
  -o, --open-close            Execute tx_open & tx_close for every transaction [benchmark only]
  -s, --csv                   Send result to stdout using CSV format [benchmark only]
  -l, --clients               Number of clients (threads) will stress the state server [benchmark only]
  -d, --medium-delay          Medium (random) delay between TX functions [benchmark only]
  -D, --delta-delay           Delta (random) delay between TX functions [benchmark only]
  -p, --medium-processing     Medium (random) delay introduced by Resource Managers operations between tx_begin and tx_commit/tx_rollback [benchmark only]
  -P, --delta-processing      Delta (random) delay introduced by Resource Managers operations between tx_begin and tx_commit/tx_rollback [benchmark only]

Important

The LIXA test utility is a LIXA client program and it does not need any special authorization to run because it does not need to write the content of /opt/lixa/var/ directory.

The lixat command does nothing useful except trying to contact the state server and optionally perform a commit and/or rollback dummy distributed transaction ^[19]. Below there's the output of a trivial execution: the program connects to the state server, performs tx_open() against all the configured resource managers and performs tx_close() against all the configured resource managers.

tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat
tx_open(): 0
tx_close(): 0

With --commit option the test program performs a dummy commit against all the configured resource managers too:

tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat --commit
tx_open(): 0
tx_begin(): 0
tx_info(): 1
        xid/formatID.gtrid.bqual = 1279875137.080f2b63a3804bfbbdd3347ca7607ba3.ef954655163edff9fee662b12f881c97
tx_commit(): 0
tx_close(): 0

A dummy commit does not damage your data because the program does not contains instructions that modify the content of the resource managers. A dummy rollback can be performed as well:

tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat --rollback
tx_open(): 0
tx_begin(): 0
tx_info(): 1
        xid/formatID.gtrid.bqual = 1279875137.c651f0f2efb249bd92f3f2b5a76741a5.ef954655163edff9fee6-62b12f881c97
tx_rollback(): 0
tx_close(): 0

The test utility can be used to:

check the state server is up and running

	      tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat
	      tx_open(): -7
	      tiian@ubuntu:~$ echo $?
	      1

(the state server is not running)

check the content of etc/lixac_conf.xml is ok

	      tiian@ubuntu:~$ export LIXA_PROFILE=XXXX
	      tiian@ubuntu:~$ /opt/lixa/bin/lixat
	      tx_open(): -7
	      tiian@ubuntu:~$ echo $?
	      1

(the profile “XXXX” does not exist)

try different profiles described inside etc/lixac_conf.xml
...

You can safely experiment by yourself using lixat command.

^[19] lixat can be used “in benchmark mode” as well, but that usage is explained in the section called “A tuning example”