Software Performance Testing is done to check the application behavior against a particular workload. Every business-man would wish to know whether their application will be able to entertain all the user requests in an effective and efficient manner and without any degradation.
Few years back, when performance testing tools were not as advanced as today, testers used to test an application performance by simultaneously accessing it through multiple machines with one user per machine, and measured its transactions response time with a stop watch. But there were dozens of issues with this approach including;
- You required large number of resources to execute a small performance testing activity.
- These tests were not repeatable.
- You could only measure a limited number of transactions manually (Response time, active users etc.)
However, now with the advent of automated performance testing tools, you can not only test all different types of applications performance for millions of users from a single source machine in a fast and convenient way but, you can also repeat these tests whenever you require without much effort.
Learning and mastering these tools is as extremely crucial for a performance tester so as to perform efficiently and effectively. The question is which tools should I learn and how should they be learned.
Come back later for guidelines on performance testing tools and their selection
