Performance Testing Archives

Tips for Enhanced Performance Engineering

by admin | Apr 23, 2019 | Performance Testing, Blog | 0 comments

Performance engineering skills are of little use if performance engineers lack adequate knowledge with regard to web development technology. A performance testing company would ensure that its performance engineers are acquainted with the modern web development stack which includes HTML5, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and SQL and database query tools. The knowledge of these concepts enables performance engineers to accurately identify a problem and immediately put together solutions.

Performance engineers must know how to identify and isolate tier-based engineering transactions since it can help them in the analysis phase. Towards that end, it is pertinent for performance engineers to know that, in engineering scripts, a single transaction targets a particular tier — Web tier, App tier or DB tier – of the deployment. Performance engineers can isolate the tier on which they would be focusing their efforts at a given point of time, by degrading a specific engineering transaction.

To get performance results that can be trusted, it is essential for performance engineers to run a single test multiple times. For reliable performance comparison of a test under the same conditions at different times, a test should ideally be executed at least three times. For better evaluation of the results of a test for the sake of performance comparison, the test should be run at least five times. Furthermore, several more executions of a test are required ahead of the final release of an application or software.

Good automation is one of the prerequisites of QA testing of an application and it holds great significance for performance engineering as well. Unless performance engineers ensure good automation, they cannot achieve successful performance engineering. Since good automation enables efficient analysis of test results, performance engineers must remain aware of the reasons and benefits of automation. Automation should be incorporated early in the testing process and testers must consistently gather metrics from the tests.

To conclude, the tips for enhanced performance testing can help performance engineers improve the scale, responsiveness and performance of an application. Trained analytical performance engineers can strive for enhanced performance engineering because of their acquired proficiency in quickly spotting glitches/bugs in software, identifying trends, proving or refuting theories, segregating bottlenecks and eventually delivering reproducible results. Our team consists of the best experts in this realm and more – connect with us to experience the best.

The Critical Need for Stress Testing Web and Mobile Applications

by admin | Apr 18, 2019 | Performance Testing, Blog | 0 comments

While conducting performance testing services, experts will emphasize the need for stress testing and load testing services as well, since performance testing would be incomplete without these tests. Stress testing of web and mobile applications becomes critical at certain times in the life of a business. More people would be driven to the website and applications of a business in the event of a positive or even negative mention of the company in the media, during holiday / festival season, or when a company offers certain benefits / sale / other incentives (especially the online shopping sites).

Given the impact and serious damage that poorly functioning websites and mobile applications can have, analyzing their behavior during ‘stress conditions’ and post a failure are two of the foremost objectives of stress testing. Successful stress testing is when the system is able to display the correct error message during times of atypical and load conditions. A top quality performance testing company will proactively ensure that they run stress tests, to prevent any major damages and risks to your business.

In addition, the experts in the domain of performance testing services will be able to save security related data even while conducting stress tests. Usually large amounts of data are lost during stress testing, and this must be prevented. The system should be able to recover almost immediately post a collapse / failure – ‘recoverability’ therefore, is the main focus of stress testing.

As with any kind of testing, stress testing too must be structured and follow a set of guidelines. Hence, before conducting stress tests, your service partner would first specify the key objectives of the test, the main conditions under which the tests would run, the amount of ‘pressure / stress’ that must be applied, and the standards of measurement to be tracked. Post identifying these objectives, stress testing tools would be required to replicate the possible kinds and amounts of load for each test and record the performance standards. When stress testing tools are used appropriately and accurately, they will be able to realistically capture the situation of thousands of users on the system, and be able to monitor the performance of the application, website, and servers under the atypical load situations.

The final step would be to simulate the potential breaking points of the websites and applications, such that they can be improved before spending valuable resources on production. Stress testing provides the otherwise unachievable insights about the actual performance of the website and mobile applications, thereby allowing a business to make the required changes and augment the systems adequately. The mistake that most businesses make is assuming since that extreme load and stress conditions do not occur during production, they would not happen at all. However, this is a highly vulnerable situation to be the business into, and must be eliminated. Using the expertise of a top performance testing company helps you mitigate such risks and vulnerability.

Why is Load Testing Important?

by admin | May 8, 2019 | Performance Testing, Fixed, Blog | 0 comments

Load testing is a crucial subset of Performance Testing that is gaining immense significance in the present-day technology scenario. Performance testing gauges the ability of a web application to handle large volumes and patterns of traffic effectively, before it goes live.

Load testing of web applications and the APIs is a testing practice that essentially tests the performance of the system under peak traffic conditions. To perform load testing, testers create a model of expected usage of an application by simulating concurrent access of the application by multiple users. Some of the reasons why load testing is important have been listed below:

Measuring the Performance and Quality of Service of a WebsiteLoad testing allows a performance testing company to measure the quality of service (QOS) performance of an organization’s website based on actual user behavior. As part of this type of testing, testers evaluate the performance of the website ‘under load,’ using different frameworks and tools like Apache JMeter, BlazeMeter, Blitz, CloudTest, LoadRunner, Loader.io, and several others. The hardware and software statistics monitored by testers include the CPU, memory, response time of the physical servers, and throughput of the system under test (SUT).

Analyzing the OSI Protocol StackLoad testing tools are capable of analyzing the entire OSI protocol stack rather than focusing on only the GUI performance, as is the case in regression testing. A load testing tool sends out hypertexts transmitted by the web browser upon the click of the button by a user. When multiple-user environments are involved, load testing tools can send out hypertext for all users, each having a distinctive login ID and password.

Identifying Significant Parameters of Application PerformanceWith the help of load testing, the key parameters of an application can be effectively identified. These parameters comprise the response time per transaction of an application, performance under various load conditions of system/database components, design issues affecting the software, and network delays between the client request and server response.

In addition, problems with software configuration such as web server, application server, and database server – are also identified, along with the shortcomings rooted in hardware, such as CPU maximization, memory limitation, and network bottleneck.

Ascertaining the Maximum Operating Capacity of an ApplicationWith the help of load testing, an organization can efficiently ascertain the maximum operating capacity of its application. Since load testing examines how the system behaves under normal load conditions as well as anticipated peak load conditions, testers can spot the elements that cause degradation or hold-ups. Hence, load testing is also called reliability testing, concurrency testing, or volume testing, as it helps testers to check the capability of the existing infrastructure to run the application under test.

Gaining Insight into the Causes for Slow System PerformanceLoad testing can pave the way for top-notch performance testing services. The process mainly pivots around the evaluation of system performance, in order to ensure that there is no system downtime when numerous users access an application simultaneously. Testers can use load testing tools to learn about the reasons behind the slow system performance. These reasons may include application server or software, database server, network latency, network congestion, client-side processing, and load balancing between multiple servers.

Improving the Scalability of an ApplicationLoad testing allows testers to determine the highest possible user numbers that an application can support. This information can be very useful for testers when additional infrastructure is required to meet potential demand for scaling the application in the future. Besides application scalability, testers can also perform special load testing, over and above the regular load testing, during certain events such as Cyber Monday, Black Friday, music festivals or sporting events, and the likes – when there is an enormous spike in traffic due to flash sales or mass crowd interest.

Reducing Cost Implications of an Application’s FailureLoad testing is an important testing technique that can be used by testers for detecting issues in an application before they crop up. The early detection of issues and the subsequent prevention of defects can bring about a significant reduction in the cost implications of the failure of an application. In the absence of load testing, failures during production can lead to massive costs for an organization due to unavailability of the application in high-traffic conditions.

Load testing is a highly productive software testing mechanism that can enable an organization to understand the potential capacity limits of its application or website. Load testing ensures that the software performs to render high user satisfaction, making load testing a significant part of the web design and optimization process. Successful load testing lends the assurance of a high-quality application that can serve a large number of users of the organization. Connect with us to ensure the best quality of applications / software.

Performance Testing, Load Testing and Stress Testing – All are Distinct

by admin | Mar 10, 2019 | Performance Testing, Blog | 0 comments

Several terms revolving around testing are used in the realm of software and automation. Some of these terms however, are erroneously used interchangeably and interpreted as the same concepts – performance testing, load testing, and stress testing are some such terms. It is our aim to bring out the significant differences in these testing types, which will help businesses and testers alike. An expert performance testing company will understand the differences and use these testing methods where and when appropriate.

Performance Testing: This type of testing ascertains the ‘performance’ of the system components under all ‘conditions’ – the response time of a software / application depending on the number of users. Performance testing is necessary to ascertain whether the software is meeting the response time, and its ‘behavior’ under normal conditions. Factors such as scalability, resource usage, and reliability are also tested and corroborated with performance testing. Performance testing are a part of performance engineering, which is aimed at resolving performance issues of the design, and the ‘build up’ of the software / application.

Briefly put: Performance testing is about time – speed, response, request, mean, and throughput – of an application / software.

When to deploy Performance Testing Those in the shift left mode must test consistently. Hire an expert software testing company and they will use performance testing to check the functioning of your website, apps, servers, databases, and networks, and keep your products in top shape. The aim of performance testing is not to detect bugs or errors, but rather it focuses on setting the top standard of performance for the software / application. Closely monitoring the product is the underlying responsibility of performance testing.

Briefly put: Load testing is testing the behavior of an application under both normal and peak usage conditions.

When to conduct Load Testing? Businesses scale and as the number of users increase, they need to understand how many users the system / application would be able to handle, and this is when load testing services become important. Load testing is also used to determine the effect of the load on the system, how the loads builds and remains in the system, and which locations have the maximum user load. Load testing must be done consistently to maintain the efficacy of the system, and get experts to make it part of the testing cycles. Such professional load testing companies would monitor attributes such as peak performance, response time under varying load conditions, server throughput, how many users the application would be able to handle without any negative effect on performance, and the suitability of the hardware in use. The QA Outsourcing Company you hire would do all of this and also plug any mismanagement or leaks of memory in the system. They would also set the service level agreements for the application, which in turn would mean that your business would be getting more for each buck spent.

Stress Testing: While similar to load testing, stress testing uses a different approach. The load on an application is consistently increased until it crashes – the idea is to test the absolute peak limit of an application. Stress testing is usually run at the same time as load testing, the only difference being that the increase in load does not stop until expected limits are attained. When the load is increased suddenly, it is referred to as spike test, and when done gradually the term used is soak test.

When to conduct Stress Testing Companies usually make the mistake of deploying stress testing services only before major events or programs that would have high demand on the application. However, any high quality QA testing services company would tell you that in order to maintain a grasp on the endurance capabilities of your system / application, stress testing must be done often. This prepares the system for any unanticipated ‘traffic’ increases, and prepares you with time and resources to quickly respond to issues and speedily fix any problems. The aim of stress tests is to analyze the behavior of the system post the crash / failure. This is critical to know whether the security of the confidential data is affected post the crash. If the stress testing process is successful, the system would restore itself and its components almost immediately, even if the crash was major.

Performance Testing Terminologies

by admin | Feb 12, 2019 | Performance Testing, Blog | 0 comments

Application software has a business driven agenda, which form the dominant driving force behind developing and managing them. A layman might find software similar, but there exists several differences between them – they greatly differ in performance statistics. In the tech business industry, performance testing is essential for keeping track of the software performance. It also forms the basis of many service level agreements between development vendors and clients. This is a highly critical process and involves rigorous performance testing along with load testing and stress testing for detailed insights about the performance and scalability.

Performance testing is all about testing the mobile network or an application software against an evaluation rubric containing numerous terminologies and physical quantities of time and efficiency measure. The software is run in an actual deployment environment. It is done to make sure that there are proper performance metrics achieved.

Here are all the necessary terminologies you may require while executing performance testing.

Any data passage occurs only after a successful TCP; which is a must. All the further information and requests can only be exchanged between a client and the server after this critical handshake is successful. It is important to note that the transfer of data does not occur through the TCP/IP protocol, but it happens in the data layer of the OSI model. Here small packets of data in bytes are transferred through package routing. It is monitored initially by the handshake and then driven by requests.

Elapsed time is an overall measure of how fast or slow an application software works. It is measured as the time at which the first byte of data is sent, and the last byte of information is received at the client’s machine. Server processing time can be calculated as a difference of the total latency time, and the connect time taken after TCP handshake. Download time for any piece of data is the difference between the elapsed time and the overall latency exhibited by the application software.

Performance testing is highly critical and should be given due importance for all software. Complete knowledge of physical quantities and terminologies involved is essential for executing performance testing and should be given due importance for all software. It is critical to keep in mind that extremities of a particular or a set of physical quantities might not help the software achieve maximum resource utilization. Consistently optimized figures of performance are necessary for quality performance on a long term basis, which only a top class software testing company can ensure – connect with us for this reason, and many more.

Preparing a Robust Performance Testing Plan

by admin | Feb 14, 2019 | Performance Testing, Blog | 0 comments

This portion of the document would list out the activities necessary for implementing the test, and the activities necessary in order for the performance test to be considered complete. The names of persons responsible for / managing each activity would also be enlisted in this portion. In addition, it is important to mention criteria due to which testing activities could be or may need to be suspended, and under what circumstances the testing process could recommence. All the planned deliverables and key persons responsible for completing each process would also need to be mentioned here.

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Learn the Basics of Modern Web Development Technology

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Acquire Smart KPI Monitoring skills

Identify and Isolate Tier-based Engineering Transactions

Use Benchmarks as a Basis for Evaluation or Comparison

Focus on Hardware in Addition to Software

Run a Test Repeatedly for Performance Comparison

Ensure Good Automation

In Conclusion:

Why to Run Stress Tests?

Stress Testing Objectives

How to Use Stress Testing Tools?

In Conclusion

In Conclusion:

Distinctions between Performance Testing, Load Testing, and Stress Testing

In Conclusion:

Connect time

Latency Time

Elapsed Time

Throughput

Performance thresholds

Saturation Limit

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In Conclusion

Identifying the Plan

Enlisting Objectives of the Performance Test Plan

The Extent of the Test / Test Items

Test Methodology

Testing Schedule

Criteria for Performing and Suspending Testing

Risks, Issues and Mitigation

Equipment and Material Requirements

Lastly, approvals

In Conclusion

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