Types of Performance Testing

Performance Testing – An Introduction

The term Performance can mean measuring response time, throughput, resource utilization, or some other system characteristic ( or group of them), by varying the number of users.

Performance Testing answer the below questions -

• Does the application respond quickly enough for the intended users?
• Will the application handle expected user load and beyond?
• Will the application handle number of transactions required by the business?
• Is the application stable under expected and unexpected user loads?
• Are you sure that users will have a positive experience on go-live day?

Performance Testing Process Image

Types of Performance Testing

Load Testing: Load Testing is done in order to check when the application fails by increasing the number of users and keeping the system resources as constant.

Stress Testing: Stress Testing is done in order to check when the application fails by reducing the system resources such as RAM, HDD etc. and keeping the number of users as constant. This is done to find out the breakpoint of an application.

Endurance (Soak) Testing: Endurance Testing is determining the system’s sustainability on a specified user load for long duration of time (may be for number of days).

Volume Testing: Testing where the system is subjected to large volumes of data. Testing which confirms that any values that may become large over time (such as accumulated counts, logs, and data files), can be accommodated by the program and will not cause the program to stop working or degrade its operation in any manner.

Performance Testing Process

Performance Testing Process

The performance testing of any application can be carried out based on the NFRs (Non-Functional Requirements). This is normally done with a discussion/meeting with the client/Business Analysts during the project planning phase. Generally this is given in terms of SLA - page response time or transaction response time, Hits Per Second, Throughput etc.




Planning a Performance Test

The following needs to be answered by a client/BA during planning of performance test –

1) Business Processes to be tested

2) Anticipated user load of application

3) Division of user load among business process (based on current logs)

4) Architecture of application

5) Environment for performance testing



For example –In mentioned point 1, three business processes need to be recorded for performance testing – Business Process 1, Business Process 2 and Business Process 3, in point 2, the evaluated application load is 200 virtual users and percentage of each business process is 40%, 30% and 20% respectively- i.e. the actual virtual user load for these business processes will be 80, 60 and 40 respectively.



Designing Performance Test Scenarios

Once the planning of performance testing is completed, performance testing team designs the test cases based on the business process provided by client/BA. These will include the step by step functionality with expected result, and the data requirement for each page. This will help the performance tester to automate the script and will help in anticipating the master/external data requirement for automated script.



Scripting Performance Test Scenarios

After completion of test case designing the performance tester will record the business processes using testing tool (Loadrunner) followed by script enhancements. These scripts will be reviewed by a technical lead/performance architect.




Test Data Generation

The testing/dev team will generate the data for test execution.



Test Scenario Design using Loadrunner Controller

Performance tester will design the scenario/mix for scheduling the groups and configuring monitors. For configuring Solaris counters the testing team can use two approaches –

1) UNIX monitor configuration using rstatd daemon utility (Please refer to Solaris counters )

2) Windows monitor configuration using perfmon (Please refer to Windows Counters)



Test Execution and Monitoring using Loadrunner Controller

After designing all test scenarios the tester will execute the test run and will be monitoring the graphs e.g – Server resource graphs, Running Vusers, Hits per Second, Throughput, Transaction Response Time, Connections per Second etc. Also the server logs can be monitored during test execution.



Test Result analysis using Loadrunner Analyzer

The result will be collated after test execution and using LR interactive graphs, the report can be published in HTML and/or Excel and/or Word document. This report will contain the summary of test and graphs as per the requirement. (Please refer to Analyzer Graphs section)