Developing a program for your business is undeniably a great idea to survive in this modern era. Indeed, it’s one of the greatest ways to interact with your existing, new, potential customers, and prospects. But is creating a website or a smartphone application calls for a victory dance? Not yet! Why? Because any web or mobile application requires a thorough inspection to assure customers’ conversions. Otherwise, customers may seek other opportunities, especially those where they get a maximum response in terms of successful information, transactions, communication, and so on. So, to check if a program is successfully working, it is necessary to pass it through the performance test and performance tuning procedures. However, if you’re not sure what these two things are, then sit tight and get ready to unearth some vital knowledge about performance testing and tuning to make sure your business-related programs work smoothly on different platforms.
Performance Testing
A performance test is a testing method to identify any software’s performance. In other words, experts examine your program’s efficiency by testing its stability and responsiveness under a certain workload. And most importantly, the test helps determine the speed of your business software with the help of numerous metrics. Performance testing can exhibit the location and nature of your software’s problem. Plus, it helps verify whether or not the program meets the specifications as claimed by an organization. Thus, allowing businesses to assure that they are delivering everything they have promised to their buyers.
For instance, the test would showcase if the banking system is safe to transfer money, or are there any leaks in the program that may cause damage to customer’s personal information. Likewise, the test helps recognize if the application runs smoothly when it is flooded with users, who are continuously involved in making transactions. Another example is of a typical website. The performance test would reveal if the site performs well during huge traffic and without any downtime, or if it crashes due to heavy traffic. Thus, performance test helps developers to rectify errors. Which, as a result, becomes profitable for any business.
Types of Performance Testing
Performance test has six basic types. So, let’s find out what these tests are.
Load Testing
Load testing aims to estimate how well an application performs when it is loaded with an increased number of users. This load is applied to the program for a certain period, and the obtained results show if the requirements of a particular application are met with the expectations.
Stress Testing
Although stress testing is a part of performance testing, the test also plays a vital role in the load testing process. In stress testing, the software is tested with an excessive load than normal to identify the weaker components, which would fail first. Stress testing uncovers a web or mobile application’s breaking point and is used to review data processing capability and the program’s response time when the traffic is high.
Spike Testing
People mix spike testing with stress testing, although both methods have their own purpose. In spike testing, the program is given a sudden load to find out whether the system will lose its strength, performance will be negatively affected, or the software will change dramatically. For instance, customer’s complaining about power outages due to heavy storms. In this case, there’s a sudden increase in the traffic on a website or application. Therefore, spike testing helps evaluate the program’s stability when there’s surprisingly an extended user interaction (bulk load as compared to the one given in stress testing).
Endurance Testing
Endurance testing, also called soak testing, is a component of load testing and it’s an important part of performance testing. It is performed to learn the program’s behavior by applying load for long period (days, weeks, or months). It helps check the response and stability of a particular application.
Scalability Testing
Scalability, or capacity testing, is run to test your program’s crashing period. It involves gauging traits, such as data flow rate, hits, response time, requests per second, network usage, CPU usage, transaction handling speed, and more.
Volume Testing
Also called flood testing, is used to analyze the impact of large data volume on the behavior and response time of a particular program. It’s a perfect testing approach for applications that include a high amount of data.
Hence, performance testing is imperative to assure the reliability, stability, and capability of your business applications. It’s a complicated process that needs a highly-qualified team of developers and testers. That’s why when it comes to performance testing, LoadView is always the first choice of countless organizations. Its multiple test curve features are prefect to evaluate some of the most complex web and mobile applications to assure your business meets its goals with high effectiveness and efficiency.
Performance Testing Metrics – How the Problem is Revealed and Monitored
Performance testing utilizes different metrics to identify and reveal the problem. The most crucial ones are the following:
- Processor Usage: It identifies the duration in which the time processor executes any non-idle threats.
- Memory Use: Availability of physical memory to process on any system.
- Disk-Time: The time required by a disk to read or write any command or request.
- Bandwidth: It reveals ‘bits-per-second’ that can move among different workloads and across the network.
- Private Bytes: Number of allocated bytes in a single process to measure usage and memory leaks.
- Committed Memory: It informs about the utilized virtual memory.
- Response Time: The duration between a user’s request and the program’s response to that specific request.
- CPU Interrupts (per second): It calculates the number of hardware interruptions per second during the process
- Network Output Queue Length: To measure the number of network packets in the output queue. In case there are multiple packets, bottlenecks and delays are highly expected and should be eliminated.
- Hits per Second: The number of hits per second on any web server during the load test.
- Memory Pages per Second: The number of pages written on or read from (per second) the available disk to rectify hard page faults, which is the main cause of system-wide delays.
- Page Faults per Second: The total rate at which fault pages are examined by the tester. It takes place when the process demands code from the external working set.
- Throughput: The rate at which a network or computer receives requests every second.
- Connection Pooling: It reveals how many user requests are met by pooled connections. Higher requests signify better application performance.
- Max Active Sessions: The number of sessions which can be activated on any software simultaneously.
Performance Tuning
While performance testing is all about testing the web applications through a variety of methods to find out errors, performance tuning is applied to correct the declared faults. For instance, your software fails the stress test, now experts will tune your API, site, or application to make sure the platform is free from such errors. In other words, your application is tuned continuously until the flaws disappear. Performance tuning is necessary because it organizes and gives easy access to the database information. That’s why it’s also called the database tuning. It involves standardizing and optimizing of database’s design with the database’s environment, which ultimately helps developers to fix some major issues.
Performance Tuning Methods
The most vital performance tuning methods are proactive monitoring and bottleneck termination.
Proactive Monitoring
Proactive monitoring includes examining a series of performance statistics to identify whether or not there’s any change in the application’s resources or behavior. Does it sound similar to a performance test? Well, yes! It is.
It’s a technique to safely audit the software’s performance and health, but for a limited time. However, if tuning is performed by highly-experienced developers, proactive monitoring becomes unnecessary, as they would identify errors in the first phase (performance testing), saving companies to bear additional expenses. And when it comes to offering premium web and mobile application monitoring, the Dotcom-Monitor platform is equipped with extraordinary monitoring solutions, as well as a great support team to lean on, who make sure that your resources are not wasted.
Bottleneck Termination
This is where the actual game begins. The question is how are bottlenecks are formed? The simplest answer is the overuse of a particular software’s element. The continuous use turns that element into a bottleneck. The bottleneck is a stage where the software receives an extreme load on its particular area, which is higher than its throughput capacity. As a result, it interrupts the workflow (application’s performance) and causes delays in the overall program’s functionality.
Finding and eliminating bottlenecks is the main aim of performance tuning. However, tuning is the part of your software’s entire life cycle – analysis, designing, programming, production, and upkeep. Most of the time, tuning is not carried out until the application is in the production process. And once bottlenecks are found, performance tuning is used as a reactive approach to fix those barriers breeding trouble in the entire program.
Other Supportive Methods
Baseline
The baseline is an important part of performance tuning. It is used as a parameter to compare the ‘before and after’ of your app’s performance. Database professionals are well aware of all facts about the application, which makes them identify the peak period without a hitch. Hence, they test and tune software in the peak duration to solve problems in the system. This helps them achieve results in real-time. And, therefore, the corrections are long-lasting.
SQL
Similarly, programmers apply the SQL language to several applications to tune them. This method helps update the data in real-time. However, the process is performed on systems with high loads, such as applications for banks, supply-chain departments, retail chains, etc.
Steps Required for Performance Tuning
Performance tuning is a complicated process that should be implied by well-experienced developers. So, here are eight vital steps for the performance tuning application.
Step 1: You should work on a realistic and logical software approach. So, make sure you analyze the structure and design of the program. Once satisfied, make a baseline for the software.
Step 2: Identify what data is required by your software. Consider the most important relations and features, and start tuning them with the help of proactive monitoring.
Step 3: Identify all the bottlenecks and compare them using the baseline method.
Step 4: Once the errors are found, it’s time to take action. Tune all errors one by one.
Step 5: Find ways to eliminate bottlenecks and apply them. Assure proper indexing, improved access paths, and memory allocation.
Step 6: Now, run performance testing again, or go for proactive monitoring to see the changes.
Step 7: If the problem still exists, repeat step 5. Also, keep the record as a baseline.
Step 8: When all errors are tuned, and you can see visible improvement, then save all the data for your future reference.
Conclusion: Performance Tuning vs. Performance Testing
Performance testing is mostly confused for performance tuning. The two concepts do relate to each other, but they aren’t identical. Performance testing helps inspect problems in any web or mobile application, whereas, performance tuning is used to improve and solve issues until the software passes the inspection criteria. Conversely, any mistake can cost heavily and could worsen the problem. But LoadView assures unerring software performance testing and tuning through its sophisticated and highly competent team. Moreover, it uses top-notch and modern tools that confirm beneficial results.
Your LoadView demo is just a few clicks away. Let our performance engineers help you get through complicated situations, or sign up to enjoy our Free Trial. And feel free to contact us for any query, as our team is always accessible 24/7.