In a method of preserving characteristics of desensitized database information for use in database management system benchmarking, at least one column of sensitive data from a database is accessed. The at least one column of sensitive data is sorted into a sorted data representation. Desensitized data is generated by sequentially mapping ascending different values of the sorted data representation to ascending desensitized values generated according to a strictly monotone increasing randomly generated function. The mapping results in a plurality of mapped desensitized values which are associated with the sorted data representation. The mapped desensitized values are unsorted into a desensitized database according to sorting information related to the sorted data representation. As a result of the unsorting, cardinalities of the at least one column of sensitive data are maintained within the desensitized database.