What is Performance Testing?

What is Performance Testing?

Definition: 

                   In software engineering, performance test is a process to measure system's (Application, Network, Database or Devices) speed (responsiveness), stability and scalability under particular work load.

Core Performance Testing Activities: 

                                      

Core Performance Testing Activities

1. Identify the Test Environment

2. Identify Performance Acceptance Criteria

3. Plan and Design Tests

4. Configure the Test Environment

5. Implement the Test Design

6. Execute the Test

7. Analyze Results, Report, and Retest

1. Identify the Test Environment: 

                     Identify the physical test environment. The physical environment includes hardware, software, and network configurations. Having a thorough understanding of the entire test environment at the outset enables more efficient test design and planning and helps you identify testing challenges early in the project.

2. Identify Performance Acceptance Criteria: 

                     

   Identify the response time, throughput, and resource utilization goals and constraints. In general,

·         Response time is a user concern, 

·         Throughput is a business concern, 

·         Resource utilization is a system concern. 

   Additionally, identify project success criteria that may not be captured by those goals and constraints; for example, using performance tests to evaluate what combination of configuration settings will result in the most desirable performance characteristics. 

3. Plan and Design Tests: 

 Identify key scenarios, determine variability among representative users and how to simulate that variability, define test data, and establish metrics to be collected. Consolidate this information into one or more models of system usage to be implemented, executed, and analyzed.    

4. Configure the Test Environment: 

 Prepare the test environment, tools, and resources necessary to execute each strategy as features and components become available for test. Ensure that the test environment is instrumented for resource monitoring as necessary. 

5. Implement the Test Design: 

 Develop the performance tests in accordance with the test design. 

6. Execute the Test: 

Run and monitor your tests. Validate the tests, test data, and results collection. Execute validated tests for analysis while monitoring the test and the test environment. 

7. Analyze Results, Report, and Retest:

 Consolidate and share results data. Analyze the data both individually and as a cross-functional team. Re-prioritize the remaining tests and re-execute them as needed. When all of the metric values are within accepted limits, none of the set thresholds have been violated, and all of the desired information has been collected, you have finished testing that particular scenario on that particular configuration.

Few example of why performance test is conducted:

Validating that the application performs properly

Validating that the application conforms to the performance needs of the business

Finding, Analysing, and helping fix performance problems

Validating the hardware for the application is adequate

Doing capacity planning for future demand of the application

Popular Performance Testing Tools

There are many different performance testing tools. Everyone claims their tools are the best. Here are my picks and this is what I think.

Commercial Performance Testing Tools:    HP Performance Center:
                                                                                     HP LoadRunner:
                                                                                    Neotys Neoload:
Open Source Performance Testing Tools:
                                                                             Apache JMeter