Newbie to performance/load testing
All:
I have been a tester/developer for some time. I have never tried performance or load testing but I want to learn. Our apps are primarly web applications running on IIS written in .NET. I have a copy of "Performance Testing Microsoft .NET Web Applications" (ms press) on order.
Is there any other books I might take a look at? Any other place I might get information on perf/load testing? Any best practices?
Also, what performance/load testing tools do you recommend?
Thanks in advance.
Scott
[546 byte] By [
ScottS] at [2008-2-2]
Hi Scott,
Re your q on load testing tools available, you can look up this link for more info on the load test capabilities provided by Visual Studio Team System for Testers. We use this for performance testing on our team (obviously :-))
- Anu
Have you given any thought to which tools you'll be using?
We have just started looking at VSTS, testers edition. That will probably be the main tool. Got some training going on this week. Since I just got into that product, I have been wondering how the web test portion and the load test portion compares to other tools out there.
Thanks Brent. I'll look into those as well.
Hi Anu,
Currently our application is web application and developed by .Net and C# in VSTS system.
We are going to do load test with the Unit test script and not through web test.
So we write the script and call the unit test cases.
Since to cover the 1 scenario which includes 2 or more functionals, how do you define the script.
For 1 scenario we need to write
- 1 script which calling all related unit test functionals
(OR)
- separate scripts each script for each function and combine in Test Mix contribution
Please let me know.
ToePwar - all you need to do is create a load test with the unit tests as components if you intend to run your unit tests as part of the load test. However, I am not sure I understand the q correctly. Am I right in thinking:
a. You have unit tests already defined in C#/VB.NET that test your application
b. You have no web tests that hit your web site
c. You can construct a functional test out of your unit tests itself by combining more than 2 tests. (You can probably use an ordered test here)
d. You want to call this combined test in the load test. (For this, all you need to do is add the combined ordered test or indivudula unit tests to the test mix)
Hope that helps. Else please let me know.
Thanks so much!!! I downloaded it and will defintely spend some time with it. I see Scott Barber on the list of authors. I have been reading anything I can find written by him. I also saw he wrote some documentation for IBM around rational testing tools. Has he switch to the Microsoft camp? 
Scott,
The Performance Testing book that Scott Barber contributed/wrote on is great - I know he had posted it on his blog and testing reflections for comments, I just recently finished going through it. Its a lengthy read. It has great pointers and is pretty thorough.
I'd only ask that it incorporated the authors opinions on what to do in more complex social situations for example:
Test Environment doesn't allow for real production simulation ie posting transactions
Boss/Manager isn't interested in what metrics you feel are important
Common representation model of metrics
Nothing to show stopping...to complain about - The book is very good and a must read.
Regards,
Mordechai
Hi Anu,
Thank you for your solution. Here is the case
To complete 1 functional => we must follow the3 transactions Likes (trans1, trans2 and trans3) and those should be in order.
We have created each unit case for each trans. So there are 3 test cases for 3 trans.
For load test we would like to make sure all user load and data load are covered for this functional if we just combined all 3 tests cases in the test mix.
( how about the Distribution of test ? we think it will impact on User load and data load based on the % test distribution)
I think for our case to cover the goal of functionality we should create the Ordered test but still want to ensure that user load and data load are covered if we combined and created as Ordered test and will load pattern go through all 3 test cases according to the order?
Please let me know.
Thanks.
Toepwar
well where's my green tick for my helpful post ? 
glad you found it useful and I'm also a Scott Barber reader
Absolutely, green tick on that post. Thanks again.
Have you read the "User Experience, not Metrics" and "Beyond Performance Testing" articles by Mr. Barber (http://www.perftestplus.com/pubs.htm. )? I have started them. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
