Load Testing

Definition: Load testing is the process of simulating and analysing the effect of many users on an application.

Overview

Load testing includes

• Stress testing where it is attempted to fail the system, to observe whether the system gracefully degrades, and the nature of its recovery profile.
• Performance measurement, where the speed of system responses and throughput of transactions are measured, and
• Continuous-use testing where the ability of system to continue functioning correctly for extended periods is evaluated.

Four Steps to a Flawless Load Test

On equipment that is as close to the live or target environment as possible:

Step One

• Define your goals and rank them in order of importance
• Determine the number and size of relevant databases
• Determine whether databases need refreshing between tests
• Define the workload of an application and the transactions to simulate

Step Two

• Build the scripts

Step Three

• Replay the scripts to determine the effect of the simulated workload on the system

Step Four

• Analysis and tuning

Web Sites of Interest

Web site for information and test tools (look under Performance Tools for the Load test tools)
http://www.aptest.com/resources.html

White Papers, Research Papers, and Articles

How do you do a performance spike? Insightful article on load approach by William C. Wake found at
http://users.vnet.net/wwake/xp/xp0010/index.shtml

Client-server performance testing.
Article by Paul Sabin
http://www.data-dimensions.com/Testers'Network/csperftest1.htm

Special Interest Groups & Organisations