PERFORMANCE TESTING COURSE CONTENT

1.Performance testing Core concepts

What is performance testing?
Why performance testing?

2.Types of Performance testing

Load Test
Stress Test
Spike Test
Endurance Test
Volume Test

3.Performance testing life cycle

Requirement gathering
Test Plan Design
Script Design
Execution and Monitoring
Result Analysis and Reporting

4.Load-runner Installation

LoadRunner architecture
LoadRunner Components
Basic C
LR functions

5.Recording Script using VUGEN

HTML Based Recording mode
URL Based Recording mode
Regenerate Script
Replay Script with different sittings

6.Introduction to Output window in VUGEN

Replay Log
Recording Log
Generation Log
Vugen Runtime settings
Naming the Transactions

7.Parameterization

Definition of parameter
Why parameterization is required
Types of parameters
Using Existing Parameters
Using Parameter List

8.Correlation

How to Handle Dynamic Values
How to identify dynamic values
Manual Correlation
Auto Correlation

9.Error Handling and Rendezvous Point

Text Verification
Size Verification
Image Verification

10.Controller

Manual scenario
Goal-oriented scenario
Scenario Design
Schedule by Scenario & Group
Real-world & Basic Schedule
Running load test in controller
Vuser Status

11.Analysis

Adding graphs
Graphs settings
Merge graph
Analysis and creating Reports
Monitor types
Starting the monitors in the controller
Measurements in the controller
HTML Report Generation

How is performance testing done?

Seven Performance Testing Steps
Identify the testing environment. …
Identify performance metrics. …
Plan and design performance tests. …
Configure the test environment. …
Implement your test design. …
Execute tests. …
Analyze, report, retest.

What is performance testing tool?

Performance Testing Tools help in the process of determining the speed, effectiveness, reliability, scalability and interoperability of the system, computer, network, program or application

Which is not a performance testing type?

Endurance testing is a non functional type of testing. Endurance testing involves testing a system with a expected amount of load over a long period of time to find the behavior of system

What is performance testing example?

Performance testing, a non-functional testing technique performed to determine the system parameters in terms of responsiveness and stability under various workload. Performance testing measures the quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.

Is performance testing good for Career?

Also, Performance Testing tools are comparatively way easy to learn than Functional testing tools. So, if you are a fresher or experienced one in manual testing and looking for a job change, try your hands on Performance Testing. This will certainly increase your chances of a good future

All About Performance Testing – The Best Acceptance Criteria

First of all, let us see what is the meaning of the term “Performance Testing”:

For general engineering practice, “Performance Testing” refers to evaluation & measurement of functional characteristics of an individual, a system, a product or any material.

However in software industry parlance, the term “Performance Testing” widely refers to the evaluation & measurement of functional effectiveness of a software system or a component, as regards its reliability, scalability, efficiency, interoperability & its stability under load.

These days a new science by the name “Performance Engineering” is emerging in IT industry & Performance Testing / Acceptance Testing are being viewed as its subsets. The performance engineering lays prime emphasis on covering the performance aspects in the system design itself i.e. right from the beginning & more important is that well before the start of actual coding.

Why Software Industry lays so much emphasis on Performance Testing:

The key reasons are:

1) Performance has become the key indicator of product quality and acceptance consideration nowadays in a highly dynamic & competitive market.
2) Customers are becoming extremely demanding on quality front & have clear vision of their performance objectives.
3) These days, every customer is looking for greater speed, scalability, reliability, efficiency & endurance of all applications – may it be multi tier applications, web based applications or client server applications etc. etc.
4) Greater need for identifying & eliminating the performance inhibiting factors early during the development cycle. It is best to initiate the performance testing efforts right from the beginning of the development project & these remain active till final deployment.

What are the objectives of Performance Testing?

1) To carry out root cause analysis of performance related common & uncommon problems & devise plans to tackle them.
2) To reduce the response time of the application with minimal investment on hardware.
3) To identify the problems causing the malfunctioning of the system & fix them well before the production run. Problems remedied during later stages of production have high cost tags attached to them.
4) Benchmarking of the applications, with a view to refine the company’s strategy towards software acquisition for the next time.
5) To ensure that the new system conforms to the specified performance criteria.
6) To draw a comparison among performance of two or more systems.

Typical Structure of a Performance Testing Model:

Step-1: Collection of Requirements – The most important step & the backbone of performance test model
Step-2: System Study.
Step-3: Design of Testing Strategies – Can include the following.

a) Preparation of traversal documents.
b) Scripting Work.
c) Setting up of test environment.
d) Deployment of monitors.

Step-4: Test Runs can cover the following

a) Baseline Test Run
b) Enhancement Test Run
c) Diagnostic Test Run

Step-5: Analysis & preparation of an interim report.
Step-6: Implementation of recommendations from step-5.
Step-7: Preparation of a Finalized Report.

Attributes of a Good Performance Testing setup:

1) Availability of a performance baseline document detailing the present performance of the system & acting as an effective baseline, which can be used in regression testing. This baseline document can be conveniently used to compare the expectations when the system conditions happen to change.
2) Performance test beds & test environment should be separate & must replicate the live production environment as far as possible.
3) Performance testing environment should not be coupled with the development environment.
4) Resources leading to fulfillment of objectives like:

However these days many companies have started doing part of the testing under the live environment, This helps them in establishing points of differences experienced during test & live systems.

How to gear up for Performance Testing?

1) Define the performance conditions: First of all we need to define performance conditions related to functional requirements like speed, accuracy & consumption of resources. Resources can be like memory requirements, storage space requirements & bandwidth of the communication system etc. etc.
2) Study the operational profile: The operational profile contains details of usage patterns and environment of the live system. It includes description of the period of operation, the operating environment, quantum of loads & expected transactions etc. When exact data is not available, the data from the testing profiles can be approximated especially when testing is not being done under the live environment.
3) Prepare good performance test cases: While designing performance test cases, our endeavor must be to

a) Understand the present performance levels & to use this information for benchmarking at a later date.
b) Evaluate the performance requirements of the system against the specified norms.
c) Clearly specify the system inputs and the expected outputs, when the system is subjected to the defined load conditions like profile of the test, test environment & the test duration etc.

Ways of doing Performance Testing:

Conventionally there are two methods of performance testing like

1) Manual performance testing
2) Automated performance testing

1) Manual Performance Testing: In order to develop an adequate confidence, the response times being a good indicator of performance of a transaction must be measured several times during the test. Use of stopwatches monitored by many persons is one of the oldest & effective way to measure the test performance. Depending upon the available infrastructure, other means can also be devised.
2) Automated Performance Testing: Many approaches can be practiced here. We can use the automation software which can simulate the users actions & can simultaneously record the response times & various system parameters like access of storage discs, usage of memory & queue length for various messages etc. etc.

We can provide additional data load over the system, through many utility programs, message replication programs, batch files & many protocols analyzing tools etc.

Important Considerations for Designing Good Performance Test Cases:

1) Stress: To take care of the ability of a system or its component to move beyond the specified limits of performance requirements.
2) Capacity: To cover the maximum amounts which can be contained, or produced, or completely fully occupy the entity.
3) Efficiency: To take care of the desired efficiency measured as the ratio of volume of data processed to the amount of resources consumed for the particular processing.
4) Response time: To take care of the specified requirements of response time i.e. the total time elapsed between the event of initiation of request to the receipt of response.
5) Reliability: Must be able to deliver the expected results with sufficient consistency.
6) Bandwidth: Must be able to measure & evaluate the bandwidth requirements i.e. the amount of data passing across the system.
7) Security: Must be able to evaluate the user confidentiality, access permissions & data integrity considerations in the system.
8) Recovery: Must be able to subject the system under test to higher loads, and measure the time it takes to the normal situation after withdrawal of loads.
9) Scalability: Must be able to handle more loads by the addition of more hardware elements components without any coding change.

Everything to Know About Performance Testing

Application performance testing helps see if an application if performing as it should. Tasks are used, usually in software, which helps determine this. If the application is not performing correctly, then software will determine the best way for the problem to be corrected. There are many features and benefits to performance testing software.

A utility gathers data about the application when using performance testing software. The software also gathers data about the machine where the application is running and the network through which application sends data. Dashboard views of critical metrics can be created to make performance testing simpler to use and view.

The software determines how well the entire system performs by checking its responsiveness and stability under various workloads. It can also analyze the scalability, reliability, and resource usage of the application. All quality attributes of the application will be investigated, measured, validated, and verified.

There are six main types of application testing. Load testing is the simplest form of performance testing. A load test is performed to understand the behaviour of the system under a specific, expected load. The load is usually the expected number of users on the application performing a specific number of transactions in a pre-set duration.

A load test will give out response times for all important and business critical transactions. When the database and application server are monitored, the test can highlight bottlenecks in the application software.

Stress testing is used to understand the upper limits of capacity in the system. This test determines the system’s ability to handle extreme load and helps application administrators decide if the system can perform well when the load goes above and beyond the minimum expected.

Soak testing, also called endurance testing, determines if the system can sustain the continuous amount of load expected. Memory utilization is monitored to detect any potential leaks. Performance degradation is an important part of soak testing that is often overlooked.

Performance degradation ensures the throughput and response times after long periods of sustained activity are good or better than at the beginning of the test. This involves applying a large load to the system for an extended period of time to discover how the system behaves under sustained use.

Spike testing is performed by suddenly increasing the number or load generated by users and observing the behaviour of the application. The goal is to determine whether performance will suffer, the application will fail, or if it will be able to handle dramatic changes in load.

Configuration tests are created to determine effects of configuration changes to a system’s components on its performance and behaviour. This goes against the previous tests which tested performance based on load perspective. For example, configuration testing can experiment with different methods of load-balancing.

Isolation testing can be applied to more than just performance testing. Isolation requires repeating a test execution that results in a system problem. This type of testing is used to isolate and confirm the fault domain.

There are many different purposes for performance testing. It can help demonstrate the system will meet performance criteria, compare two systems to find which performs better, and it can measure what parts of the system or workload causes the system to perform badly. Performance tests are usually undertaken without consideration of setting realistic performance goals.

This is an important step in order to get the most accurate performance results. Performance goals will differ depending on the system’s technology and purpose. However, all performance testing should include some important attributes. This can include concurrency or throughput, server response time; render response time, and performance specifications.

Before beginning performance testing software, make sure the application is built stable and that it resembles the production environment as closely as possible. The testing environment should be isolated from other environments in order for results to be consistent.

Reflective Solutions is dedicated to providing software and services that allow clients to protect and increase their brand and revenue. This is enabled by ensuring clients never experience performance problems or outages with the system provided. Their enterprise-level performance testing tool – StressTester – is recognised by industry analysts, testing consultancies, and end users as being the easiest to use and most fairly licensed available. This allowed adopters to get up to speed very quickly and deliver real ROI in a matter of days. Their packaged services deliver real business benefit in one or two weeks.