Software testing tools and load testing information

Neotys, a company providing easy-to-use load testing tools for web applications, has announced the Neotys Service Partner Program for companies that specialise in web application quality and performance testing and seek to expand or update their offerings.

Neotys offers a web load and stress testing solution, NeoLoad. NeoLoad is easy-to-use, requires no scripting, and provides a rich feature set at cost effective price points. NeoLoad supports all web and application server technologies including J2EE, .NET, PHP, AJAX, SOAP, FLASH, FLEX, Google Web Toolkit and Oracle Forms.

The market proliferation and mission critical nature of web applications has rapidly increased the need for load and stress testing. These tests ensure performance targets are met before applications are deployed and keep performance tuned throughout the SDLC.

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There is a new service announced this week for load testing web applications. It is a hosted service so it takes away all the worries about setting up load injectors and generators and monitors as well as performance testing experts and load testing tools. It is suitable for ecommerce sites, corporate websites, web applications and web-enabled systems.

Shunra today announced the HP certification of Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software, a Windows-based solution that tests the impact of applications on networks in all developmental stages by emulating a wide area network (WAN) and detailing network conditions seamlessly during load testing. The interoperability with HP LoadRunner enables a powerful, integrated solution offering customers highly-accurate, network performance testing.

“Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software has transformed the traditional ‘develop on a LAN – deploy on a WAN’ methodology by providing actual depictions of real-world network impact in all phases of the application development lifecycle, prior to deployment,” said Thomas Charlton, CEO, Shunra. “End-user experience is a critical business driver for our customers, and Shunra significantly increases deployment success rates by analyzing WAN characteristics and impact on geographically remote end-users. Companies are now gravitating toward the requirement of network-aware applications at all developmental stages in order to avoid costly performance bottlenecks, time troubleshooting and rollout failures.”

“Application performance testing labs are looking to lower costs, while delivering load test results in a simple, repeatable manner,” said Subbu Iyer, Senior Director of Products, Performance Center and LoadRunner, Software, HP. “The combination of HP LoadRunner with Shunra VE Desktop for HP Software allows customers to achieve this and test network-aware applications with a WAN emulation capability.”

For the full article visit Business Wire

ITKO, a leading provider of testing solutions for integration and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) software, announces Web 2.0-ready features to enhance the quality coverage of enterprise applications. In a single application environment, LISA can test from the implementation layers where data business logic resides, to the new UI-oriented patterns of development becoming popular in rich browser-based application delivery models such as SaaS, AJAX and mashups.

Testers and developers using LISA can now scriptlessly record both dynamic web elements such as Java applets, AJAX, and validate browser-specific actions, such as modal popups, file uploads and HTTPS security warnings. Then these functional tests can be expanded to validate workflows that span underlying service and implementation layers, for regression and load testing.

• Codeless UI Recording and Testing: Now testers can record and playback the entire Web UI testing workflow within a native browser emulation (IE 6, IE 7, Firefox, Netscape), and get sustainable test assets out of the process. LISA captures all user actions, from mouse clicks and data entry, to drag-and-drop functions in the web UI, and then provides several ways to leverage that test, and add dynamic data validation points without needing to re-script the test.
• Web 2.0-Ready Testing: LISA already tested Web applications at the HTTP level, simulating all of the transactions that occur between the web page and the web server. Now LISA supports direct testing of DTHML/Javascript, AJAX, custom Java Applet, Swing and AWT approaches to delivering UI functionality into the browser.
• Single Test Case, from Web 2.0 to SOA: Testers no longer need to use separately acquired or developed tools to test Web 2.0 interfaces, and all of the other implementation layers that feed them. Users can use LISA to model a single test case with steps that invoke and verify the behavior and performance of web UIs, JDBC database calls, WSDL/SOAP, an EJB server, and messaging layers on an ESB.
• Load Testing of Web 2.0: LISA also efficiently conducts multiple user testing of Web 2.0 browser applications. LISA uses a shared set of virtual users that can test any technology, leveraging pre-existing functional test cases, and dynamically staging them as load tests from a single instance of LISA. These same tests can then be extended to test every layer of the application at load. Upon staging, load tests can simulate an instance of the browser for each virtual user, or run “headlessly” to simulate only the transactions that occur between objects to conserve test system overhead.
• Asynchronous User Simulation: Unlike other tools that simulate variable user behavior and “think time” only by setting an arbitrary time frame for each successive test step, LISA allows testers to flexibly synchronize tests with the real-world conditions and timing produced by each step of the test case.

“To truly ensure quality, the entire development and QA team needs to be able to invoke at the browser, in all the meaningful ways actual end users will, and then verify the resulting actions and effects that occur in the middle-tier layers that feed that Web 2.0 application,” said Mackay. “Then, you need to immediately be able to run those functional Web 2.0 tests as load and performance tests using LISA Server, so business requirements can be continually verified across the entire system on a continuous basis.”

For the full article go to Business Wire

In a press release from Market Wire, Empirix announced its Hammer for IMS platform now provides even more options for advanced feature testing, load testing, and analysis of emerging IMS applications.

“As IMS networks move from design to deployment, vendors and service providers have uncovered many new test requirements, such as DIAMETER testing for subscriber databases, emulating IMS infrastructure devices, and testing specific application scenarios in the IMS domain.

The enhancements to Empirix’s Hammer for IMS platform improve its ability to test IMS applications, devices, and networks and extend the company’s call generation and analysis capabilities for IMS. These enhancements include additional protocol support, new IMS infrastructure device emulations, and full incorporation of 3GPP SIP extensions for complete emulation of an IMS User Element (UE). Specifically, the Hammer for IMS platform can now be used to test the following common IMS-enabled features:

• Consumer VoIP Services;
• Fixed-mobile Convergence;
• Presence-based Applications;
• Push-to-talk over Cellular;
• IP Centrex; and
• Centralised Subscriber Data Repositories.

Enhancements to Empirix’s IMS testing platform also include additional device emulations, such as full support of Session Control Functions, Application Servers, Home Subscriber Servers, and Charging Functions, as well as Gateways, Gateway Controllers, Media Servers and Border Control Functions. “

Siemens and Acutest have combined forces to present a one day management briefing on Application development. It covers the management of the software application development process and will enable the delegates to ensure their organisations implement effective and appropriate management controls.

The development of application software to meet end user expectations, time and budget is complex and difficult to achieve. There are many reasons why application development projects seem to fail:

* Incorrectly defined functional specifications
* The relevant regulation and legislation is not understood and defined
* Projects and suppliers are not tightly managed
* Limited ability of the organisation to assess the solution against functional specification
* The application availability (load, performance, security, resilience and disaster recovery) is considered only at the later stages of the project affecting budget.

* View the seminar agenda
* More information about Acutest independent London testing consultancy

And here is Part 2 of Comparing Tomcat Performance Across Platforms

“In Part 1 of this article, we examined the relative performance differences, noting the behavioral differences as the servers approached capacity. This limitation was easily remedied by increasing the memory available to Tomcat. Here we’ll present the behavior of the servers after this change was made to their configuration.”

For information on Load testing services in the UK

Good artilcle comparing Apache Tomcat performance differences between the Windows and Linux platforms.

The Tests

“Public Web sites and intranet applications see distinctively different distributions of user bandwidth. For public Web sites 56k to 4Mbit connections are typical. For intranet applications 10Mbit-100Mbit is common (this bandwidth is shared). So a maximum 10Mbit bandwidth per user was selected for simulation purposes. The bandwidth was limited for each virtual user by the testing tool.

Note that with a bandwidth per user of 10Mbit on a 100Mbit network, no more than 10 users could be supported using their full bandwidth (assuming 100% network efficiency, which Ethernet can’t achieve). However, all the scenarios contain significant “think time” (time between pages) that allows more than 1,000 users to use the 100Mbit bandwidth. Each test was stopped before any indications were given that the throughput capacity had been reach to ensure that our measurements were an accurate gauge of the server’s performance.

Construction of Test Cases

The test case required a servlet that could return Web pages of a specified length referencing a specified number of external resources (images were used in this simulation). The servlet used provided the required functionality hard-coded in the servlet. Its source code is publicly available in the ContainerBenchmark.java file. Once the servlet and necessary resources were installed (via a WAR file), the test tool was used to record the scenarios interactively using the Web browser. In this case Opera 8.01 was used, but which browser is used to record the scenarios should not affect the test. Each scenario was recorded over the duration listed above. The testing tool was configured to simulate an approximately equal share of “think time” between each page, lingering slightly longer on the last page before restarting the test. (See Figure 1-2-3)

Testing Procedure

Test case recordings, virtual user simulation, and data gathering were all managed by the testing tool in this case Web Performance Trainer 2.8, Build 629.”

Performance testing

DETROIT, May 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ —

Compuware Corporation today introduced the new version of its performance testing solution, Compuware QALoad 5.5. This new release extends Compuware’s history of delivering enterprise performance-testing capabilities to organizations by improving tester efficiency through wizard-driven automation and through enabling a collaborative approach to improving application quality.
“QALoad’s new automated parameterization wizard and rules library will dramatically increase productivity for our clients,” said Thomas Poirier, CEO at Persystence, Inc. “The ability to simplify the creation, storage and sharing of rules is a crucial time-saver for difficult-to-automate patterns and could reduce script creation and maintenance by as much as forty or fifty percent.”
Compuware QALoad is an automated load-testing tool for web, Java, .NET, packaged ERP/CRM applications and distributed environments. Compuware QALoad simulates thousands of users performing key business transactions against an application to ensure its performance and scalability prior to deployment. With Compuware QALoad, testers can quickly pinpoint problems, optimize system performance and help ensure successful application deployment.

From Sys-con. The intro is below:

“Performance testing a J2EE application can be a daunting and seemingly confusing task if you don’t approach it with the proper plan in place. As with any software development process, you must gather requirements, understand the business needs, and lay out a formal schedule well in advance of the actual testing.

The requirements for the performance testing should be driven by the needs of the business and should be explained with a set of use cases. These can be based on historical data (say, what the load pattern was on the server for a week) or on approximations based on anticipated usage. Once you have an understanding of what you need to test, you need to look at how you want to test your application.

Early on in the development cycle, benchmark tests should be used to determine if any performance regressions are in the application. Benchmark tests are great for gathering repeatable results in a relatively short period of time. The best way to benchmark is to change one and only one parameter between tests. For example, if you want to see if increasing the JVM memory has any impact on the performance of your application, increment the JVM memory in stages (for example, going from 1024 MB to 1224 MB, then to 1524 MB, and finally to 2024 MB) and stop at each stage to gather the results and environment data, record this information, and then move on to the next test. This way you’ll have a clear trail to follow when you are analyzing the results of the tests. In the next section I’ll discuss what a benchmark test looks like and the best parameters for running these tests.

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Approaches to Performance Testing - A best-practices approach to maximize your performance test effort