What are performance testing tools? Before an application can be deployed, it should ideally be tested under different operating conditions to make sure it can perform as expected. To do this, software testing professionals use performance testing tools (sometimes just called “testing tools”) to isolate and identify potential client, network, and server bottlenecks that might affect how an application will behave in production.
Some performance test products are commercial. Others are open source. They do QA testing and stress testing. They can do either manual testing or automated testing. Most tools have features for extensive test automation to save time. Most are able to do a website test.
Test automation users on PeerSpot have commented at length regarding the best features to seek in an automation testing toolset or performance testing tool. Users want testing tools to be very easy to download and set up. Ease of use and levels of automation are also important, given the limitations one testing personnel and resources.
A good performance testing tool should make it easy to create test plans and follow through on them. According to PeerSpot users, a tool should be able to simulate a load of concurrent users and enable extensive, flexible reporting output to show the results.
Some test tools offer a recording feature, which makes it easy to create test plans. For instance, the tool might provide testing templates. The tool should support multiple protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP etc.) and technology stacks, such as SAP, JAVA and so forth. Users value flexibility and the ability to monitor systems under test. Testing tools that offer comprehensive results analysis are praised for making testing teamwork more efficient.
Some users want performance monitoring tools to offer powerful scripting tools to record user actions programmatically. A flexible, versatile scripting engine can extend tests with success-failure checks that make the test more intelligent. The ability to ramp concurrent users makes the tool representative of real world use conditions. In this way, the tester can scale up in order to simulate load.
Testing product performance is necessary before the product hits the market to ensure that a positive user experience is delivered. With performance testing, it is easier to forecast the rate of adoption, productivity, and success of a software product. While resolving performance issues can be costly, the absence of testing all together may be more expensive as it can lead to larger problems, such as compromising a brand’s reputation or damaging a company’s otherwise effective digital strategy, and much more. If performance testing is not done prior to software being released, the software may run slowly or result in poor usability, and there may even be inconsistencies among different operating systems.
Below are some of the different types of performance tests that exist:
When choosing performance testing tools, here are some features you should look for:
The benefits of performance testing include:
The performance testing process is made up of the following steps:
