I previously discussed what I saw as the main advantages to HP Performance Center, however I also have a number of grips using the software. What follows are the top five areas I which I think Performance Center could be improved upon: The Performance Center User administration user interface relies intensively on AJAX calls, e.g. […]
Month: August 2011
My Experience with Loadrunner (Overview)
Starting to use Loadrunner as a performance validation platform changed the way I looked at load generation tools; previously I had extensively used JMeter. What follows are a list of the main benefits & points of using Loadrunner: 1. Loadrunner is an enterprise-grade tool: As the project team I worked on was split site we […]
What to do when live performance issues occur
Post Performance Testing: What to do when application performance issues occur. So performance testing is complete, tests have been agreed and signed off and then the system goes live …… only to experience some sort of performance issue. All eyes are on the performance team – so what went wrong? It is my experience the […]
Indispensable Tools for the Performance Tester
Here is list of the tools I find improve my productively as a performance tester: HTTP FOX plugin : Allows you to view traffic flowing from client browser to server TOAD (freeware): Connect to the DB, inspect tables and create SQL. WireShark: Detailed network monitoring tool, complicated – but useful to capture actual packets of […]
What is the Difference between Loadrunner and Performance Center
This question has been asked many times and the simple answer is this: Performance Center is simply Loadrunner wrapped up in a web front end. I personally think that the web front end looks extremely dated and clumsy – its in need of an update, but dispiste being superficial it does do what is required. By wrapping up […]
Performance Center : Architecture overview
High Level Overview Loadrunner has the following high level conceptual components: Injector(s) – Used to replicate virtual users Controller – Used to coordinate the actions of the simulated users Realtime monitors – gives information on hardware and software metric’s during simulation Analysis Database – stores information for post analysis Any commercial load-testing tool should consist of these. Communication between […]
Detailed Performance Testing process
I have previously described the high level performance testing process – here is a detailed flow of the steps required for the implementation of this. The diagram is split into idealised roles. In practice we quite often find the performance team is very small, sometimes only one person. In this respect the demands placed […]
What makes a good Performance Tester?
Performance testing is a high profile and high impact activity; mistakes made here are very visible and costly. Performance testing is akin to a technical project manager role. Quality requirements and stakeholder management is as important as the tool experience. The fact of the matter is that I’ve found performance testing to be a largely […]
The Results and reporting stage
Performance testing results produce lots and lots of figures, statistics and graphs. To the uninitiated stakeholder with lots of other tasks to balance it looks like pure hell, particularly if they are asked to sign off on the basis of these. Performance testers tend to underestimate this stage in terms of time and importance, quite […]
The Performance Execution Phase
This is where the real performance testing begins – scripting, execution, re-execution and analysis of results. Generally I attempt to get into the scripting phase as soon as possible – not all phases of the Performance Testing lifecycle have to be done in strict sequence, if I know a business process has to be simulated, […]
