Web Load Testing for Dummies: Book Announcement

"More so now than ever before, your company’s website and web applications are critical to the success of your business initiatives. Think of all the business generated or sustained via the World Wide Web today compared to any other time in history — in today’s digital culture, a business with any sort of crucial web presence needs to make sure that its website is working hard for the business and not against it. That’s what web load testing is all about.

"Key to success on the web is customer experience, which means that web application performance is a priority. Not convinced? Spend a few moments thinking about the impact to your business (in other words, think about how angry the CEO and/or investors would be) if:
  ✓ Your new application launch is delayed due to performance problems
  ✓ Your site breaks under the load of your successful marketing promotion
  ✓ High-traffic volume causes such poor web performance on your busiest online shopping day that abandonment skyrockets and conversions plummet
  ✓ Your new infrastructure is configured improperly, grinding the website to a crawl

"Managers and executives of organizations that derive significant portions of their revenue from web applications realize that they need to focus more on protecting revenue, reducing risk, and ensuring that customers have great experiences. They see how web applications that perform well on release day and throughout their production lives strengthen the company’s brand and reputation, creating customer loyalty. In other words, web load testing is a critical component to any risk management plan for web applications."

Get the eBook version free here.

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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Stop Cheating and Start Running Realistic Tests

I did a webinar with SOASTA on 9/29/2011, in case you missed it, I've copied the description and links from SOASTA's Info Center so you can have a look.  If the twitter-verse is to be believed, it didn't suck.  :)

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Stop Cheating and Start Running Realistic Tests

Constrained by inflexible test hardware, poor tool scalability, exorbitant pricing models, and lack of real time performance information, performance testers have been forced to cheat for too long! Cloud Testing opens up elastic, full-scale load generation from global locations at affordable cost, rapid and accurate test building, and real time views of internal and external performance metrics.

• Stop removing “think times” to work around technical or license issues
• Build tests using real business workflow, not just a flood of page hits
• Run tests that preserve session states and accurate timings, end-to-end
• Inspect every component as tests run, not just from the outside-in

Watch the Webinar | Download the Webinar

 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Model Workloads for Performance Testing: FIBLOTS

This is the third installment of a currently unknown number of posts about heuristics and mnemonics I find valuable when teaching and conducting performance testing.

 

Other posts about performance testing heuristics and mnemonics are:

 

• Installment 1 - Performance Testing Core Principles: CCD IS EARI
• Installment 2 - Classify Performance Tests: IVECTRAS

 

For years, I have championed the use of production logs to create workload models for performance testing. During the same period, I've been researching and experimenting with methods to quickly create "good enough" workload models without empirical data that increase the value of the performance tests. I recently realized that these two ideas are actually complimentary, not exclusionary, and that with or without empirical usage data from production logs, I do the same thing, I:

 

FIBLOTS.

While the play on words makes this mnemonic particularly memorable, I'm not saying that I just make it up. Rather the acronym represents the following guideword heuristics that have served me well in deciding what to include in my workload models over the years.

 

• Frequent: Common application usage.
• Intensive: i.e. Resource hogging activities.
• Business Critical: Even if these activities are both rare and not risky
• Legal: Stuff that will get you sued or not paid.
• Obvious: Stuff that is likely to earn you bad press
• Technically Risky: New technologies, old technologies, places where it’s failed before, previously under-tested areas
• Stakeholder Mandated: Don’t argue with the boss (too much).

--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."