[ANNOUNCE] echoping 6, with a PostgreSQL plugin

echoping is a program to test and monitor the response time of network
servers, for instance DBMS servers. It is typically used from the
command-line or called repetitively by a monitoring framework such as
SmokePing (http://www.smokeping.org/).

http://echoping.sourceforge.net/

The new version, v6, just released, adds plugin support. Which means
that, if you are not satisfied with the hard-wired protocols, you can
easily develop a plugin for your favorite protocol.

For instance, here is a demo of the PostgreSQL plugin (included with
echoping):

% echoping -n 10 -m postgresql db.example.org -c dbname=lsr2 \
'SELECT * FROM Languages'
Elapsed time: 0.027410 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.024084 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021900 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021903 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021892 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021865 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021886 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021922 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021871 seconds
Elapsed time: 0.021873 seconds
---
Minimum time: 0.021865 seconds (11708 bytes per sec.)
Maximum time: 0.027410 seconds (9340 bytes per sec.)
Average time: 0.022660 seconds (11297 bytes per sec.)
Standard deviation: 0.001713
Median time: 0.021896 seconds (11692 bytes per sec.)

You can use echoping to debug performance problems, avoiding the fuzzy
"it seems a bit faster if I remove the constraint" or to monitor
automatically performance issues, to see the slowdowns when
checkpointing runs.