What is our primary use case?
My main use case for using Gatling Enterprise is for doing load testing, performance testing, or API level testing for a lot of the API endpoints in my back-end services here at Intuit. We use Gatling Enterprise for creating endpoints and then calling them and adding load, making sure our system scales properly.
We use Gatling Enterprise by defining the APIs inside Gatling. We create simulations and scenarios which are directly read by Gatling. In those scenarios, we define in the code what APIs we need to call. We then add load via the Gatling Enterprise user interface over a given amount of time by adding a number of users or requests for that particular scenario over a given time period. We then see how well our system is performing in that case.
The interesting thing about Gatling Enterprise is the fact that we can define scenarios wherein a particular scenario can have multiple API calls as a downstream happening in one scenario. This helps us load test a particular scenario or use case overall in depth. That really makes our system scalable.
What is most valuable?
The ability to add scenarios, the ability to configure concurrent users per second, and the ability to define how long a particular test should last are valuable features. After that, I can draw conclusive reports and graphs around how well the particular test took, how many API calls were successful versus how many errored out, how many were failing due to authentication errors, and what sort of granular errors I got. That really helps us understand the scale at which our system is performing.
I rely on the fact that we are able to add a particular number of users per second as simulations in the code or in Gatling Enterprise. The reason it is very important for my team is because it mimics the way actual users use our product in their day-to-day lives where there are periods wherein our system and product receive way more traffic, and that traffic results in way more downstream traffic, which Gatling Enterprise perfectly helps me capture.
It has led us to have really robust scalability testing, performance testing, and load testing, thereby making sure of our system integrity during crunch time or during times of peak traffic. It has helped build confidence in our systems.
We saw fewer outages and fewer periods of slowness in the product. Our number of customer complaints or customer escalations reduced by almost 20 to 30 percent over the period of a year when we initially started using Gatling Enterprise. As more and more teams are adopting this, the number is growing. It has led to real positive impact here.
What needs improvement?
The UI can be made a little better to understand. The overall user interface can be made so that non-technical people should be able to easily integrate with and understand what is happening in Gatling Enterprise. Additionally, there could be a really good AI integration in Gatling Enterprise, especially in the front end or UI part of it, wherein you should be able to describe a scenario in plain English, and the code should be able to automatically be generated.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Gatling Enterprise for the last around five years, ever since I have been working with this company.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any stability issues with Gatling Enterprise.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Gatling Enterprise is pretty decent in terms of scalability. It scales well to all products and all services, and it is pretty uniformly implementable.
How are customer service and support?
I have not needed to contact customer service.
What was our ROI?
It is definitely time and money saved in terms of user escalations and user actions occurring, but I am not able to speak on the exact details about it.
What other advice do I have?
Before you start using Gatling Enterprise, please make sure to read all the documentation and then get up to speed with the UI because that is the biggest learning curve, but overall, it becomes smooth after that.
Gatling Enterprise is pretty decent. I have never needed to use customer support, but whenever needed, I find a good community online.
I gave this review a rating of 7 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
