Generating a test workload for a database

A system for generating a test workload for a database, comprising:

• a computer hardware system having a processor, wherein the computer hardware system includes
• a workload capturing module configured to capture a workload comprising database statements sent to a source database on a source system;
• a meta information collecting module configured to collect the data schema and data distribution statistics in the source database;
• a data generating module configured to, based on the data schema collected by the meta information collecting module, create data objects with the same data schema in a target database, and based on the data distribution statistics collected by the meta information collecting module, generate data with similar data distribution characteristics in the target database;
• and
• a statement mutating module configured to mutate at least some original database statements in the workload captured by the workload capturing module, wherein
• execution of the mutated database statements on the target database will have similar performance characteristics to those of execution of the original database statements on the source database to obtain a test workload.