Performance Test Approach

by EDITOR on 15/12/06 at 1:39 pm

QA Consultants recognizes the critical need for solid performance testing processes for development and deployment of mission critical applications.  Application availability / reliability, user experience, and business performance depend on applications operating effectively within a predicted service activity model.  QA Consultants has successfully implemented a performance test program on numerous client engagements and has developed a core competency in performance engineering.  While our typical implementation approach leverages the flexibility and power of Mercury’s LoadRunner product we do have resources skilled in all of the industry leading performance test platforms:  Empirix, IBM Rational, Segue, etc.

QA Consultants leverages industry best practices by conducting performance testing in three phases:

  1. Performance Profiling
  2. Load Testing
  3. Stress Testing

Performance profiling is a performance test in which response times, transaction rates, and other time sensitive requirements are measured and evaluated.  The goal of Performance Profiling is to verify performance requirements have been achieved. Performance profiling is implemented and executed to profile and tune a target-of-test’s performance behaviors as a function of conditions such as workload or hardware configurations.

Load testing is a performance test which subjects the target-of-test to varying workloads to measure and evaluate the performance behaviors and ability of the target-of-test to continue to function properly under these different workloads.   The goal of load testing is to determine and ensure that the system functions properly beyond the expected maximum workload.  Additionally, load testing evaluates the performance characteristics (response times, transaction rates, and other time sensitive issues).

Stress testing is a type of performance test implemented and executed to find errors due to low resources or competition for resources. Low memory or disk space may reveal defects in the target-of-test that aren’t apparent under normal conditions. Other defects might results from competition for shared resource like database locks or network bandwidth. Stress testing can also be used to identify the peak workload the target-of-test can handle.

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