I was giving a database mirroring demo last week and needed a way to quickly demonstrate the automatic failover capabilities in SQL Server 2005. I was at a session at TechEd IT Forum last year run by Paul Randal and Kimberley Tripp and remebered seeing them use the
Dual Database Monitor tool to simulate user transactions and illustrate how these are affected by mirroring failovers.
This is now available to download for $9.99 from
SQLSkills.com. As well as being a cool tool to use in demos, I am also using it to test DB Mirroring configurations without needing to write any test .NET code. I would recommend adding this to your toolset as it can also be used for testing Replication configurations. A great way to demonstrate the functionality and ease of use of DB Mirroring!