Chapter 5: Overview of Performance Testing Tools

Software Performance Testing Handbook
A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Open Vs Licensed Performance test tools

There are lot of open source and licensed tools available in the market to do performance testing. Usually for small organizations where there are budget constraints, open source tools would be the only choice. There are good open source performance test tools like JMeter, OpenSTA available in the market. One should be very careful in using custom build or open source tools as the tool implementation logic including thread handling, inter-arrival time between the requests spawned, etc would have a huge impact in the way performance tests are conducted.

When it comes to organizations which have performance critical applications, due to expectation on high accuracy and reliability on the test results, they prefer using licensed tools in the market like HP Load Runner, HP Performance Center, Segue’s SilkPerformer, Empirix E-Test, Radview Webload, Compuware QALoad, etc.

Criteria for choosing the Performance test tool

There are certain things which need to be analyzed before choosing the performance test tool for your application. Look for the following before you choose the tool

1. Look for the protocols supported by the test tool. Does the tool support web applications and client-server applications?
2. Check whether the tool provides the editor to develop the test scripts.
3. Check whether the tool provides features to identify the transactions uniquely, to provide user think time, to provide the test data, to handle server side dynamic variables and to see the script replay with the application pages.
4. Check whether the tool has options to configure the ramp up, ramp down and steady state load duration for running the test.
5. Check whether there are provisions to monitor the system resources during the test.
6. Check whether monitors could be used across different operating systems.
7. Check whether the tool provides the test results in a readable format (which can be opened as html or word format)
8. Check whether the tool provides enough information about the Hits/sec, Throughput (in transactions/sec and bytes/sec), Running users/sec, System resource monitors and errors/sec details.
9. The tool should not consume much of the resources of the client machine resulting in load generation issues.


The most important tool


Choosing the correct automation test tool is not the challenge in conducting the performance testing. The performance test tool could only give the details on the server performance, but it’s the Performance Tester who needs to interpret the observations clearly and analyze the root cause of the issues, confirm the bottlenecks by rerunning the tests, provide the report of observations and recommendations in user understandable format. The Performance tester‘s brain is the most important tool to make the performance testing a success.

The Performance tester should be strong in the concepts rather than just being a performance test tool expert. Though expertise in the test tool is an added advantage, the tester should possess right set of capabilities to pinpoint the performance issues of the application.

Performance Testing Tools Overview

Some of the popular performance test tools include

• HP’s Load Runner / Performance Center (licensed)
• Radview’s Webload (licensed)
• Compuware’s QAload (licensed)
• Borland’s SilkPerformer (licensed)
• Empirix’s e-Load (licensed)
• OpenSTA (freeware)
• JMeter (freeware)
• Grinder (freeware)