To improve its competitiveness with Oracle, SAP is making use of a performance tool from Mercury Interactive Corp. to guide customers on the performance of SAP NetWeaver applications.

SAP is offering a Go Live Check service through its existing links with customers that can employ Mercury Interactive's LoadRunner performance-testing software at customer sites. The testing is controlled by SAP and sets up a stress test on NetWeaver applications running in SAP's Enterprise Portal software.

SAP software users describe the types of users they anticipate using the portal, then SAP technicians use LoadRunner to generate browser calls to the portal that mimic what real users would try to do. LoadRunner captures application response times and identifies potential performance bottlenecks.

"We've worked with SAP engineering in Waldorf, Germany, to build best-practices testing to optimize SAP applications," says Rod Lehman, director of alliance marketing for Mercury Interactive. Another result of the testing is to indicate the stability of the portal site as it gets stressed by heavy user traffic, he says.

The service is designed not only to optimize SAP applications out of the box, but to capitalize on NetWeaver's portfolio of development tools that allow customers to extend and customize the applications, then test them through the Go Live Check service before moving applications into production. The service is free, but if additional testing or consulting services are needed, the customers are referred to Mercury Interactive's Performance Optimization Service.

The degree that SAP is working with other vendors to optimize operation of its applications is a reflection of the new competitiveness in the enterprise-applications market.

IBM's Janet Perna, general manager of the Software Information Management group, which includes IBM's DB2 database, said last month that IBM is working on an optimized version of DB2 for SAP applications.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said his company will leverage its advantage of selling both database and application software. Last year, SAP spun off what used to be its own high-performance relational database to the MySQL AB firm that supports the MySQL open-source database and has since sought to tighten ties with database vendors, such as IBM.