Performance Testing - Understanding its relevance

Introduction: Performance testing is generally done to determine performance attributes like response time, throughput and also the performance problems (like bottlenecks, memory, disk, process, processor, cache, network, etc.) or any memory leakage present in the system when application is running in normal scenario. This testing also identifies the system’s behavior when the application is communicating with other application in the system. It also evaluates the compliance of a system or component with specified performance requirements.

The Performance Engineering Process is as follows:

Each testing process consists of the following activities:

Planning & Requirement Gathering

• Analyze AUT
• Gather application usage data
• Prepare test data
• Identify & prioritize load test scenarios, usage patterns
• Setup load test environment
• Design scripting guidelines, templates and checklists

Scripting

• Test Script development
• Configure Test Scripts for Dynamic Information & Parameterization

Execution & Monitoring

• Perform Preliminary Tests
• Perform Formal Tests
• Create & Run Scenarios
• Monitor Server & Resources

Result Analysis

• Identify and analyze bottlenecks.
• Evaluate overall performance

Tuning & Benchmarking

• Tune the system
• Benchmark the Result for New Test Result Comparisons
• Setting New Benchmarks if the new test results are found better than the previous standards

Reporting & Closure

• Collect performance metrics
  • Transaction Response Time
  • Throughput
  • Errors
  • Number of bugs entered
• Determine the benchmarking information for various scenarios
• Identify the Test Acceptance Criteria
• Create Executive Status Summary
• Perform additional load testing as needed

Diagrammatic explanation of the steps of Performance Testing Process: