My Book on Software Performance Testing for Begineers

Here is the updated table of contents of my book.... I am happy to share that the book will be available in my blog in downdable pdf format within a week. Preview of all the chapters will be available in couple of days.

Software Performance Testing Handbook

A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

Author : Ramya Ramalinga Moorthy

Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction.. 7
What is Performance Testing.. 7
How Performance Testing is different from Functional Testing.. 8
What is an E-Business Application.. 8
Components of a Web Site.. 9
Why Performance Testing is Crucial.. 10
Performance Testing Jargons.. 10

Chapter 2: Performance Testing – A Quick Overview.. 15
Performance Management.. 15
Performance Testing Approach.. 16
Dynamism in Performance Testing.. 18
Application Performance Management.. 19
Myths about Performance Testing.. 19
Performance Process Maturity Model.. 22

Chapter 3: Deriving Performance Test Goals.. 25
Why to set the Performance Test Goals.. 25
Know your customer.. 25
Deriving Quantitative Goals.. 26
Industrial Standards for Benchmarks.. 27
User behavior Modeling.. 27
Importance of automation in Performance Testing.. 29
Performance Test Estimation.. 29

Chapter 4: Workload Identification.. 33
What is Workload? 33
Types of Workload.. 33
Customer Behavior Modeling.. 36
Customer Behavior Model Graph (CBMG).. 36
User Community Modeling Language (UCML).. 36
Web log Analysis.. 36
Web Log Analysis Tools Overview.. 37
Web Log Analyzers Summary.. 38
Web Log Analysis Metrics.. 42
Web Site Traffic Monitoring.. 46
Overview of Statistical distributions.. 46

Chapter 5: Overview of Performance Testing Tools.. 51
Performance Test Tool Requirements.. 51
Market Tools.. 52
Open Vs Licensed Performance test tools.. 52
Criteria for choosing the Performance test tool.. 52
The most important tool.. 53
Performance Testing Tools Overview.. 53

Chapter 6: Setting up Performance Test Environment and Performance Test Scripts development best practices.. 56
Know the Test and Production environment.. 56
Test environment Isolation.. 56
Network Isolation.. 57
Load Generators.. 57
Test Data Generators.. 58
Test Execution Environment.. 58
How to choose the test scenarios.. 59
Tips for writing successful performance test scripts.. 60
Real time versus Virtual user Mapping.. 63

Chapter 7: Application Benchmarking.. 64
What is benchmarking?.. 64
Why should we benchmark the applications?.. 64
Software Benchmarking.. 64
Hardware Benchmarking.. 65
Industry Standards for Benchmarking.. 65
Transaction processing Performance Council (TPC).. 65
Standard Performance Evaluation Council.. 66
Mistakes in Benchmarking.. 67

Chapter 8: Performance Test Execution 68
Quality of Service of web application.. 68
Virtual User Simulation.. 69
Pre-requisites for Performance Tests.. 69
Types of Performance Tests.. 70
Performance Test Execution Approach.. 73
Tips for Load and Stress Test Execution.. 76
Test Execution Factors.. 77

Chapter 9: Performance Test Monitoring 81Introduction to Performance Monitoring.. 81
What Counters needs to be monitored?.. 81
Key Performance Counters.. 82
Performance Monitoring in Windows platform.. 85
Using Perfmon.. 85
Post production Monitoring.. 87
Benefits of Performance Monitoring.. 87

Chapter 10: Performance Bottleneck Analysis.. 88
Scott’s Recommendation on Scatter Charts.. 88
Scatter Chart Types.. 89
Performance Test Analysis.. 90
Best Practices on Performance Bottleneck Analysis and Isolation.. 92
Performance Testing Vs Profiling.. 94
HP Diagnostics.. 94
SQL Profiler.. 98
Know your Limits.. 99
Typical bottlenecks on DB server.. 100

Chapter 11: Performance Test Reporting.. 102
Why is it Critical.. 102
How to report the results of performance testing.. 102
Components of a good Test Report.. 103
Components of a Good Visual 104
Response Time Reporting 104
Best Practices of Test Reporting recommended by Scott Barber 105

Chapter 12: Road Ahead – Moving towards advanced Performance Engineering techniques.. 107
Moving towards Performance Engineering.. 107
What is Queuing Theory?.. 107
Types of Queuing System.. 108
What can be modeled as Queues?.. 109
Limitations of Queuing Theory.. 110
Operational Laws.. 110
a. Utilization Law.. 110
b. Little’s Law.. 111
c. Interactive Response Time Law.. 112
d. Forced Flow Law.. 112
e. Flow Balance Assumption.. 113
f. Bounding Law of Service Demand.. 113
Capacity Planning.. 114
Why Capacity Planning is required.. 114
When is it required?.. 115

Happy Learning!!!!

Performance Test Estimation Approach

Challenge your Performance Test Estimation Effort Using Test Factors

Performance Test effort estimation is the initial challenge we face in the Performance Test Life cycle. As Performance Testing is more like an investigation activity which may take any direction, the ad-hoc estimation methodologies used for performance test estimation doesn’t seem fruitful. Because of the dynamism and varying scope, there are lots of issues in the test effort estimation. Based on our experience in the performance testing projects on the web based applications, we conjecture that the Performance Test Estimation approach using Test Factors could be more reliable. Our approach is based on the consideration of the various test factors involved in scripting, execution and analysis, thereby eliminating the use of ad-hoc estimation methodologies and it is architecture / technology independent.

This paper describes how to do effort estimation for a performance testing project. The paper focuses on the pre-requisites and the factors which need to be analyzed in order to arrive at the performance estimation model along with the details about how to use this estimation model. This approach is being implemented in Honeywell for the estimation of Performance Testing effort on web applications and is proven to be ninety-five percent accurate. It’s been used to estimate ten projects falling under simple, medium and high complex project categories. The case study illustrates the application of this technique to arrive at the estimation for a typical web application.

The readability of the paper covers Performance Test Engineers, Test Leads, Test Managers and others with the domain knowledge of performance testing.

Look for the entire article here...