Complete the logical design of the database.

Ensure you have:

Prepare the physical deployment environment of both the database and application. The deployment environment must accurately represent the final production environment: that is, the lab and production environments should share the same memory and disk configurations on the same platform/device type.

Ensure you have reached a stable point in your application programming phase. Remember you are looking for performance optimizations not defects; however, the latter may also be revealed as a result of testing.

All database queries should access and return as much data as required. If the production environment requires sorting of data, ensure queries include this data as well. Otherwise, the application cannot accurately test representative memory requirements.

Deploy a copy of the database and application to the final disk location.

Decide what element of the database performance you want to check and potentially tune.