Performance Testing - A Case Study of a Combined Web/Telephony System
In its most abstract sense performance testing is the loading of a system, or a part of a system, with a synthetic workload, i.e. taking a real system and using specialist scripts and tools to emulate the activities of multiple users (where a user may be another system) performing typical user actions. Atypical workloads are sometimes used to stretch a system to, and beyond, the anticipated limit to add confidence that it will be able to support.What differentiates performance testing is that the focus of the work is on a real system with a controlled load rather than a chapter or computer simulation-based exercise, or a live system with a live and uncontrolled load. An advantage that performance testing has is that it works with the full complexity of the system in its implemented state, rather than a simplified model, or how it should work according to the design. The downside is that testing can only begin when there is something to test and this is inevitably later in the life cycle than other forms of performanceengineering, and obviously major problems found at a late stage are more costly to fix than if they had been found at an earlier point in time.However, as many modern systems are an integration of specialist components bought in from third parties, who may be reluctant to share details of how their product operates for good commercial reasons, performance testing may be the first opportunity for the integrator to find out if the components being used to build the system live up to their specifications and expectations. It should be noted that performance testing is not limited to a particular technology, although the choice of tools used may be strongly linked to either the underlying technology or to the system interfaces where work is presented.
Performance Testing - A Case Study of a Combined Web/Telephony System, Page 1 of 2
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