Performance testing has been around since the 1990’s and has been widely used in website performance management. Today, it is a critical aspect of web application performance management thanks to ubiquitous reach of the Internet and the growing popularity of web applications. Today I’d like to talk a little about best practices in performance testing, benefits of a healthy performance testing program, what you should pay attention to when choosing a performance testing tool, and provide you with an overview of some popular performance testing tools for web applications.
For performance testing, it is very necessary to have some specialist tools which will help us in investigation. If you are looking forward for related tools then here is list of performance testing tools which will help you to do your job easily.
StresStimulus
StresStimulus is popular with performance testing services because it is capable of handling scenarios that may be difficult to test using other tools. It works by automatically fixing playback errors using its unique autocorrelation feature. The tool records user actions before replaying them to emulate changing usage patterns. It also keeps track of load impact on the responsiveness of the software and the server infrastructure. It can also detect hidden concurrency errors and provides in-depth performance metrics.
The key features of this performance testing tool are as follows:
- Cloud or on-premise testing using multiple load generators
- End-to-end Test Wizard reduces the learning curve by covering all steps
- Option of manual scripting is available, but not required. The tool supports upto 3 scripting languages.
- Allows script export to Visual Studio test format
- Can be used as a Fiddler add-on or an independent tool
Rational Performance Tester
Rational Performance Tester from IBM is designed to create and run performance tests. It is also a powerful analysis tool. The tool allows you to verify the stability and scalability of web-based applications before they are deployed. This is an automated performance testing tool that develops a demo of the transaction process between the web service and the user.
It is capable of gathering all the information and analyses them to help improve efficiency. It makes it easy to detect and rectify any leakage in the application or server. Rational Performance Tester is widely used by performance testing services to develop error-free and effective cloud computing service. Some of the key features of this tool are as follows:
- Supports event-based and scheduled testing
- Supports scriptless testing
- Runs with large tests involving multiple users
- Supports real-time reporting that allows instant performance issue identification
- Supports automatic detection and identification of dynamic server response
- Supports automated test data variation
- Runs website load tests with HTML version of web pages opened during test recordings
The performance testing tool supports the following protocols – Web HTTP, Citrix, XML, SOA, Weblogic, Websphere, SOA, and Socket Recording.
StormForge
StormForge offers fast and accurate enterprise-grade Performance-Testing-as-a-Service.
It is the only platform that combines performance testing with machine-learning powered optimization which allows users to both understand the performance and automatically identify the ideal configurations of the application for performance and resource utilization.
Use StormForge to load test your applications for performance and availability at scale before you release them to production. Create load tests in just three minutes and scale from tens to hundreds of thousands of requests per second, and even millions of concurrent users.
Easily create repeatable, automated load tests to incorporate into your CI/CD workflow. Capture actual production traffic to ensure that your load testing reflects actual traffic patterns.
Benefits:
- Shift performance is left to ensure performance and reliability before release.
- Improve user experience by ensuring application performance under load to meet SLAs and minimize business-impacting issues.
- Reduce risk and release with confidence by ensuring deployment success by testing with real-world scenarios before releasing new code into production.
- Build a culture of performance by empowering DevOps teams to build load testing into the CI/CD process to proactively ensure performance and reliability.
- Cut your cloud costs, cloud waste, lower your cloud bills, and improve your performance, guaranteed. StormForge guarantees a minimal reduction of Kubernetes cloud applications.
Rational Performance Tester
Rational Performance Tester(RPT) is a performance and load testing tool developed by IBM Corporation. It is performance test creation, execution, and analysis tool that helps development team to validate the scalability and reliability of web based applications before deployment into production.
Features:
There are good features which gives confidence to the users that all performance related bottlenecks are resolved. Following are some of the features of this tool:
- No coding involved
- It is one of the best performance testing tools that provides scheduled and event based testing
- Real time reporting for immediate performance problem identification
- It is one of the best website load testing tools that can run with large multi users tests
- Accurate user profile workloads
- This load test software has automated test data variation
- Automatic identification of dynamic server responses
- Performs the website load test with rendered HTML view of web pages visited during test recordings
- Environment and Platform support
- Entrust security protocol support
- Java code insertion for customization
Protocols:
Citrix, Socket Recording, Web HTTP, SOA, SAP, XML, Websphere, Weblogic
HP Performance Tester (LoadRunner)
This is an enterprise performance testing version of Loadrunner and a platform enabled both global standardization and formation Performance CoE.
Features:
- Lower the cost of distributed load testing
- Scale from single projects to a full-scale testing Center of Excellence (CoEs) that consolidates hardware, standardizes best practices, and leverages global testing resources
- Reduce the risk of deploying systems that do not meet performance requirements through the use of effective enterprise load tester tool
- It is one of the best performance testing tools that lowers hardware and software costs by accurately predicting system capacity
- Pinpoint the root cause of application performance problems quickly and accurately
- It is one of the Effective performance test tools for utilization tracking
- Browser based access to global test resources and optimal usage of load generator farm.
Protocols:
All protocols are supported by Load Runner load test tool
Silk Performer
Silk Performer tool is an enterprise class load and stress testing tool and has the ability to test multiple application environments with the thousands of concurrent users. It is one of the best load testing tools which supports the widest range of protocols.
Features:
There are many good load and stress test features in Silkperformer and those are listed as follows:
- Components -> Workbench, True Log Explorer and Performance Explorer
- Requires minimum hardware resources for virtual user simulation
- Simulates modifiable virtual users
- This load test tool Supports integrated server monitoring
- Customer friendly licensing
- Correlation and Parameterization is user friendly
- No License requirement for Controllers or Individual Protocols
- Handles Load Test in Project approach
- Generates reports with tables and graphs and allows customization.
- This stress testing tool supports six models of workloads.
- This load tester tool provides Agent Health Control
- Stress test website with server side diagnostics
- Resource Management
- It is one of the best website load testing tools that provides Version Control Management
Protocols
HTTP/HTML, HTTPS/HTML, HTTP/HTTPS, Flash, Email (SMTP/ POP), FTP, TCP/IP, LDAP, XML/SOAP, .NET and many more
SmartMeter.io
SmartMeter.io is the preferred option for performance testing services who want to address the drawbacks of JMeter. The tool supports the creation of a simple scriptless test environment with its Recorder. It provides test reports and has features like automatic test criteria assessment and test runs trend and comparison analysis. The tool offers full support for CI/CD integration. Its key features are as follows:
- Create a scriptless test environment
- Advanced response body extractor
- Real-time results and GUI test runs
- Comprehensive reporting, automatic assessment, and test execution comparisons
- Supports CI/CD integration
The SmartMeter.io supports the following protocols – HTTP, FTP, LDAP, JDBC, JMS, and SOAP. There is no need for browser plugin or proxy setup. It has excellent capabilities in CI integration, distributed testing, and provides unmatched performance testing support when it comes to validating apps.
Conclusion:
Many programmers and software engineers don’t think about performance testing tools. But since performance is an important part of the development process, it’s vital to know what benchmarks your application is achieving and if users can handle it. These tools will help you ensure that your applications perform well and comfortably beneath heavy use, otherwise known as stress testing.