The technological world is ever evolving, and Low-Code and No-Code platforms have made a significant impact in the area of software development. These platforms have supported software development, enabling individuals to build functional and efficient applications regardless of their coding expertise. By providing visual development tools and pre-built components, Low-code/No-code platforms empower users to focus on solving problems and creating value rather than struggling with code.

While these platforms have made software development easy and accessible to non-developers, they introduce new challenges. One of the most pressing concerns is performance. Can applications developed on Low-code/No-code platforms match the performance of traditionally coded ones? It has become a pivotal question for many organizations considering a Low-code/No-code approach. And the answer to this question is “Low-code/No-code performance testing.”

What is a No-code or Low-code Environment?

Low-Code and No-Code platforms allow software creation and deployment without extensive manual coding. While Low-Code environments require some traditional coding, No-Code platforms enable complete app development without writing a single line of code. By reducing the need for manual coding, these platforms significantly speed up the development process, allowing businesses to deploy solutions faster and adapt to changing user needs more efficiently.

The Importance of Performance Testing

Businesses continuously seek ways to develop software faster, cheaper, and more efficiently, and low-code/no-code offers the perfect solution. However, with convenience comes challenges, especially in terms of performance.

Unique Challenges in Low-Code and No-Code Platforms

Low-code and no-code platforms bring about unique challenges that make performance testing even more vital:

Lack of Code Visibility

The basis of low-code/no-code platforms is that they abstract the underlying code, making it more user-friendly. However, this abstraction also means developers may not be aware of inefficiencies in the automatically generated code.

Template-based Development

Many platforms leverage templates to speed up the development process. While templates are efficient, they carry unnecessary code structures that can affect performance.

Integration Complexities

Low-code and no-code platforms often integrate with other systems or platforms. These integrations can introduce latency, especially if not optimized.

Customization Restrictions

Unlike traditional development environments where developers can optimize every aspect of the code, low-code and no-code platforms might limit customization, leading to potential performance constraints.

Rapid Development

The development speed in these platforms sometimes means that performance considerations are an afterthought. When you can quickly drag and drop components, there’s a risk of neglecting how these components might interact at a larger scale.

Why Performance Matters in Every Environment?

User Experience (UX)

Regardless of the platform or tool used to create an application, the end user’s experience remains paramount. Slow apps can lead to decreased user satisfaction and engagement. A study once showed that 53% of mobile users abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Imagine the abandonment rates for a sluggish application!

Operational Efficiency

Small or low-performing applications can hinder operational efficiency within organizations. Employees may waste valuable time waiting for apps to load or perform tasks, decreasing productivity.

Scalability

An app might work seamlessly when tested with a small user group, but what happens when it’s rolled out to the masses? With performance testing, businesses can avoid encountering scalability issues that can disrupt service.

Reputation & Revenue

A poorly performing app can tarnish a company’s reputation. Customers who can’t rely on your app to function efficiently are less likely to engage with your business or make purchases.

Understanding the Low-Code and No-Code Architecture

At the core of Low-code and No-code architecture lies the concept of abstraction. Abstraction involves simplifying complex technical processes to make them more user-friendly. In Low-Code platforms, developers work with a visual interface to create applications using drag-and-drop components, reducing the need for extensive coding. At the same time, No-code allows non-developers to build applications without coding knowledge.

While these abstractions offer speed and accessibility, they also introduce a layer of complexity that can impact performance. The more layers of abstraction involved, the harder it can be to optimize an application for peak performance. Performance testing becomes essential to ensure that these abstractions don’t lead to sluggish or inefficient applications. Addressing this challenge requires a keen understanding of the underlying architecture and its implications for performance.

Differences in Traditional vs. Low-Code/No-Code Platforms

Performance Goals for Low-Code/No-Code Platforms

Regarding Low-Code/No-Code platforms, achieving peak performance demands a clear roadmap. Setting specific, measurable performance objectives is the foundation of successful application development. These objectives guide the development process and provide benchmarks to evaluate the application’s efficiency. Performance goals include:

• Achieving a specific response time

• Supporting a defined user load

• Maintaining consistent throughput under varying conditions

Factors to Consider

Response Time

It refers to the application’s response time to a user’s action. It’s a critical factor that directly influences user experience. Slow response times can lead to user frustration and decreased engagement. Performance goals should outline the maximum acceptable response time for different types of interactions within the application.

Throughput

It measures the number of transactions an application can handle within a given time frame. It’s a measure of the application’s efficiency and scalability. Performance goals should define the desired throughput under various usage scenarios to ensure that the application can handle user requests without a dip in performance.

Scalability

It is an application’s ability to handle increased workloads and user loads without compromising performance. Performance goals should address how well the Low-Code/No-Code application can scale up or down based on demand. This is crucial for accommodating growth without disrupting the user experience.

User Load

Understanding the maximum number of users the application can support concurrently is vital. Performance goals should specify the anticipated user load and ensure the application performs optimally during peak usage.

Performance Testing Tips & Techniques

Performance testing is critical to ensuring that applications, whether built using Low-Code or No-Code platforms, meet user expectations for responsiveness and efficiency. As these platforms gain popularity for their rapid development capabilities, it’s crucial to understand how to test and optimize their performance effectively. Let’s look into some tips and techniques for performance testing of Low-code/No-code applications:

Automating Performance Tests

Utilizing tools tailored explicitly for Low-Code/No-Code testing can streamline the process and enhance efficiency. The benefits of automation include repeatability, accuracy, and the ability to simulate a wide range of user interactions. Tools like JMeter and BlazeMeter offer user-friendly features that cater to visual-based development.

Effective Monitoring and Reporting

Monitoring key metrics during performance testing provides insights into the application’s behavior under various loads. Response times, throughput, error rates, and resource utilization are critical metrics to track. Real-time dashboards facilitate immediate feedback, enabling rapid adjustments to optimize application performance.

Optimizing Test Data Management

Data-driven testing demands thorough test data management. Using realistic datasets that mimic production data scenarios is essential. Data masking and pseudonymization techniques also safeguard sensitive information during testing while maintaining data realism.

Ensuring Realistic Test Environments

Mirroring production configurations in test environments is pivotal to accurate performance testing. Replicating hardware, software, and network settings provides that test results closely resemble real-world scenarios. Beware of common pitfalls like underestimating the test environment’s scale or neglecting to account for third-party integrations.

Early Integration of Performance Testing

Don’t wait until the end of the development cycle to start performance testing. Incorporate it from the early stages of development. This approach allows you to identify and address performance issues as they arise, preventing bottlenecks from becoming ingrained in the application.

Scalability Testing

Test the application’s scalability by gradually increasing the load and observing how it handles higher user demands. This practice ensures the application can grow with user requirements without sacrificing performance.

Load Testing with Simulated User Loads

Utilize load testing to assess how well your application performs under various levels of user loads. Simulating expected and unexpected traffic spikes will give you insights into the application’s scalability and help identify performance limitations.

Conclusion

As software development continues to evolve, Low-Code and No-Code platforms are becoming necessary for businesses aiming for agility and swift digital transformation. While promising rapid development cycles, these platforms bring unique challenges, especially regarding performance.

However, they can effectively navigate these challenges with a strategic approach to performance testing and a deep understanding of the architecture and potential bottlenecks. The key lies in proactive monitoring, regular audits, and leveraging built-in and external tools to simulate real-world scenarios. With the right performance test strategies and practices, businesses can harness Low-Code/No-Code platform’s capability without compromising user experience or application efficiency.

Why Choose TestingXperts for Performance Testing?

With years of experience in QA, TestingXperts understands the complexities of Low-Code and No-Code platforms. These platforms speed up app development, but with speed comes the challenge of ensuring top-end performance. Following are some of the reasons to partner with TestingXperts for Low-code and No-code application performance testing:

• Our team understand the root cause, providing sustainable solutions and optimized performance

• Tailored performance testing strategies to specific platforms and business needs

• Simulate real-world user scenarios to see how your app performs in genuine situations

• We constantly monitor app performance, catching and addressing issues in real-time

• Regular updates and clear communication to keep you always in the loop

• Always up-to-date with the latest trends and platform updates

• Our team collaborates with your developers, ensuring seamless communication and shared objective

Contact our experts now to find out more about effective performance-testing solutions.

The post Performance Testing in Low-Code and No-Code Environments: Tips and Techniques first appeared on TestingXperts.

Content 1. Continuous Performance Testing: An Overview 2. Why Does Continuous Performance Testing Matter? 3. Benefits of Continuous Performance Testing for DevOps driven Businesses 4. How Does Continuous Performance Testing Work? 5. Conclusion 6. How TestingXperts Helps Businesses with Continuous Performance Testing?

Continuous Performance Testing: An Overview

Continuous performance testing is a methodology for continuously monitoring and evaluating the performance of software applications throughout the software development lifecycle. It involves the use of automated tools to simulate user behavior, generate loads, and measure the application’s response time, throughput, and resource utilization under various conditions. Continuous performance testing is an essential part of the DevOps and Agile development process, which emphasizes collaboration, automation, and continuous delivery.

Continuous performance testing is often implemented using a combination of tools and technologies, such as load testing tools, monitoring tools, and performance analytics platforms. The main goal of continuous performance testing is to identify performance issues early in the development process, enabling teams to address them before they impact end-users. By continuously testing the application, developers can also ensure that new features and changes do not introduce performance regressions, which can cause slowdowns, crashes, and other issues.

Continuous performance testing typically involves the following steps:

Defining Performance SLAs: Identify the key performance SLAs that the application needs to meet, such as response time, throughput, error rate, and resource utilization.

Creating Performance Tests: Create automated performance tests that simulate user behavior and generate load on the application.

Executing Performance Tests: Execute the performance tests on a regular basis, such as daily or after every code change, to continuously monitor the application’s performance.

Analyzing Results: Analyze the performance test results to identify performance issues and bottlenecks and prioritize them based on their severity and impact on end-users.

Report and Remediate: Report the performance issues to the development team and remediate them by fixing the code, optimizing the infrastructure, or adjusting the application configuration.

Why Does Continuous Performance Testing Matter?

Continuous performance testing is an essential approach for organizations in the current digital age. It provides a way to measure and monitor the performance of applications, websites, and other digital services over time. Continuous performance testing helps organizations identify performance issues quickly and take corrective action before they become significant problems. This helps to ensure that customers have a good experience with the organization’s digital products and services.

This QA process also helps digital businesses ensure that their applications are able to handle increased load or traffic without any degradation in performance. With more and more people using their applications, it is essential for organizations to make sure that their applications can handle the load without any issues. The process helps businesses do just that by providing real-time feedback on how the application is performing under various load conditions.

Continuous performance testing also allows businesses to track usage patterns, which can help them better understand customer needs and improve their products accordingly. Additionally, data from continuous performance testing can be used to detect anomalies or malicious activities on an application or website, helping organizations protect their systems from cyber-attacks. Finally, continuous performance testing results can be used to identify areas of improvement to optimize performance and increase customer satisfaction.

Benefits of Continuous Performance Testing for DevOps-driven Businesses

Continuous performance testing is essential for the DevOps-driven business models as the process ensures that the application meets the performance requirements consistently. Here are some of the key advantages of continuous performance testing for DevOps-based digital businesses:

Improves Quality:

Continuous performance testing helps identify performance bottlenecks early in the development cycle. This way, developers can fix the issues before the application goes into production, which ultimately improves the quality of the application.

Enhances User Experience:

Applications that are slow or unresponsive can have a negative impact on the user experience. Continuous performance testing ensures that the application is performing optimally, which leads to a better user experience.

Saves Time and Money:

By identifying performance issues early in the development cycle, continuous performance testing helps save time and money. It is much more expensive to fix performance issues in production than in the development cycle.

Provides Continuous Feedback:

Continuous performance testing provides developers with continuous feedback on the performance of the application. This feedback helps developers make informed decisions about performance improvements and optimizations.

Supports Agile Development:

Continuous performance testing is essential in Agile development. It ensures that the application meets performance requirements in each iteration and allows developers to quickly respond to performance issues as they arise.

How Does Continuous Performance Testing Work?

Continuous performance testing is a process that aims to continuously monitor the performance of an application or system throughout the software development life cycle. It involves automated testing against various performance SLAs, including response time, throughput, and scalability, to identify and fix performance issues early in the development cycle. Here’s how continuous performance testing works:

Setting up the Environment:

First, the testing environment is set up with the required hardware, software, and network infrastructure. This includes configuring the load testing tool, creating test scripts, and defining the performance metrics to be measured.

Test Execution:

The load testing tool is used to simulate user traffic and generate load on the system under test. The tool can generate traffic from multiple virtual users, each simulating a real user interaction with the application, performing a specific action on the system.

Performance Analysis:

During the test execution, the tool captures performance metrics such as response time, throughput, and resource utilization. These metrics are analyzed to identify any bottlenecks or performance issues in the system.

Report Generation:

Once the test is completed, a detailed report is generated highlighting the performance metrics and any performance issues that were identified during the test. Developers use this report to fix the identified performance issues and improve the system’s performance.

Iterative Approach:

The performance testing process is repeated continuously throughout the development cycle to ensure that any new code changes do not adversely affect the performance of the system. This helps to catch performance issues early in the development cycle and avoid any performance-related issues in production.

Conclusion

Continuous performance testing allows digital businesses to stay ahead of the competition by ensuring that their applications are always running at optimal levels. By regularly monitoring and analyzing an application’s performance, organizations can quickly identify areas where improvements can be made in order to enhance user experience and increase customer satisfaction. Evidently, continuous performance testing is essential in today’s world as it helps organizations keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape while ensuring that their applications are always running at peak performance levels.

How TestingXperts Helps Businesses with Continuous Performance Testing?

TestingXperts (Tx) is a leading provider of performance and load testing services for businesses across domains. Tx has experience with all industry-leading performance testing and monitoring tools, along with expertise in end-to-end application performance testing services, including network, database, hardware, etc. With a highly skilled team of performance testers, Tx helps businesses benchmark their application performance. Tx provides customized test results reports to clients that help them make informed decisions.

At TestingXperts, our Continuous Performance Testing services are designed to help businesses achieve their performance goals by ensuring that their applications and systems are always running smoothly. We use the latest tools and technologies to provide real-time monitoring and early detection of performance issues, which enables us to quickly address any problems that arise.

By testing applications and systems for performance issues, TestingXperts helps businesses avoid downtime, prevent slow response times, and manage other problems that can result in lost revenue, damage to brand reputation, and unhappy customers.

Our Continuous Performance Testing Service offer:

Early Detection of Performance Issues: Detect performance issues early on in the software development lifecycle and save time and money on expensive fixes.

Real-time Monitoring: Our real-time monitoring and tracking system measures application performance to detect issues as they arise and helps take action to resolve them before they impact users.

Increased Agility: Helps businesses become more agile by providing them with the ability to quickly and easily make changes to their applications and systems without fear of introducing performance issues.

Reduced Costs: By identifying and addressing performance issues early, businesses can save money on expensive downtime and lost revenue.

Improved User Experience: Helps to ensure that applications and systems are always functioning optimally, which leads to improved user experience and increased customer satisfaction.

Leverage Tx-Perfkit

Tx-Perfkit is a first-of-its-kind Performance Testing and Monitoring Accelerator developed by TestingXperts Test Center of Excellence (TCoE). Tx-Perfkit is a unique and exclusive in-house framework that provides the following key benefits:

• Ensure QA cost savings of up to 30%

• Can be integrated with DevOps CI/CD pipeline

• Covers all stages of performance testing, followed by performance engineering

• Helps implement a shift-left approach for performance testing

• Helps to increase the overall profitability of a performance testing engagement

• Can be deployed on cloud or on-premise infrastructure to generate load on the Application Under Test (AUT)

• Quickly monitor the application infrastructure in one go

• Helps to load test blockchain and IoT applications

The post Continuous Performance Testing: Making DevOps Environment More Efficient first appeared on TestingXperts.

Content 1. Chaos Engineering Explained 2. Importance of Chaos Engineering 3. Role of Chaos Engineering in Meeting DevOps Objectives 4. Benefits of Chaos Engineering for Digital Businesses 5. Key Challenges of Chaos Engineering 6.Overcoming the Challenges of Performing Chaos Engineering 7.Conclusion 8.How TestingXperts Helps Businesses with Chaos Engineering?

Chaos Engineering Explained

Chaos engineering is the practice of intentionally introducing controlled chaos into a system in order to test and validate its resilience and fault tolerance. The goal of chaos engineering is to proactively identify potential failures in systems before they occur in real-world scenarios, thus improving the overall reliability and availability of the system.

Chaos engineering involves creating and conducting experiments to simulate failures in a controlled environment, such as network failures, system failures, or resource constraints. These experiments are designed to help engineers undeis one of the 5 larstand how the system behaves in the face of failures and identify any weaknesses or bottlenecks that need to be addressed.

Importance of Chaos Engineering

Chaos engineering is an essential practice for organizations that rely on distributed systems. It helps identify weaknesses in a system’s architecture and ensure that it can withstand unexpected events. By simulating “chaos” scenarios, chaos engineering allows organizations to test their systems and gain confidence in their ability to handle any situation. This practice helps digital businesses build resilient systems that are able to recover from disruptions and maintain availability quickly.

By testing the system with different inputs, chaos engineering helps identify areas of improvement or potential risks that may not have been previously considered. Chaos engineering also provides valuable insights into how a system behaves under different conditions. Additionally, it can provide visibility into how changes in the environment or system components affect the overall performance of a system.

Organizations are able to proactively prepare for outages by simulating various disaster scenarios and identifying potential points of failure. This practice also enables teams to understand their systems better and be prepared for any situation, providing them with the tools they need to respond more effectively when incidents occur.

Chaos engineering encourages collaboration between teams by providing visibility into how different parts of a system interact with one another and how they would respond in various situations. This practice helps create an environment where teams are empowered to take ownership of their projects while understanding how their work affects other components of the system.

Role of Chaos Engineering in Meeting DevOps Objectives

Chaos engineering helps digital businesses meet DevOps objectives by introducing a proactive approach to identify and mitigate potential problems in the production environment. This approach significantly differs from the traditional reactive approach, where issues are only fixed after they occur.

By injecting controlled chaos into the production environment, DevOps teams can simulate real-world scenarios and assess how well their systems respond to unexpected conditions. This helps identify potential problems and vulnerabilities, allowing DevOps teams to implement necessary changes to improve resilience and reliability.

Overall, Chaos engineering helps meet DevOps objectives by enabling organizations to:

Improve performance:

By regularly testing systems, DevOps teams can identify bottlenecks and other performance issues and make necessary changes to improve efficiency.

Ensure high availability and reliability:

By testing systems in controlled chaos, DevOps teams can assess how well systems respond to failures and make necessary changes to improve resiliency and ensure high availability and reliability of the system.

Increase collaboration:

By encouraging cross-functional teams to work together to identify and mitigate potential problems, DevOps teams can foster a culture of collaboration and improve teamwork.

Enhance security:

DevOps teams can identify security risks and implement necessary changes to improve security by testing systems for vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

Benefits of Chaos Engineering for Digital Businesses

Here are the key advantages of adopting chaos engineering for digital businesses:

Improved Resilience:

By simulating failures and outages, Chaos Engineering helps organizations identify and resolve weaknesses in their systems before they cause real harm. This leads to enhanced reliability and resilience, reducing the risk of outages and downtime.

Faster Recovery:

By regularly testing systems, organizations can quickly identify and fix potential issues before they become serious problems. This results in faster recovery times in the event of a real failure.

Better Understanding of System Behavior:

By performing controlled experiments, Chaos Engineering provides organizations with a deeper understanding of their systems and how they behave under different conditions. This information can be used to make better-informed decisions about system design and operation.

Improved Scalability:

By testing and improving the resiliency of systems, organizations can ensure that their systems are able to handle increased demand and scale smoothly as needed.

Increased Confidence:

By regularly testing and improving the reliability of systems, organizations can have increased confidence in their ability to handle outages and failures. This increased confidence can help organizations make more informed decisions about their technology investments.

Key Challenges of Chaos Engineering

While it can lead to significant benefits, it also presents a number of challenges, including:

Safety:

One of the main concerns with chaos engineering is ensuring the system’s safety and its users’ safety. It’s important to ensure that experiments are carefully planned and executed to minimize the risk of unintended consequences.

Complexity:

Systems are often highly complex, making it difficult to predict the results of a chaos experiment. This can make it difficult to determine the root cause of any failures and accurately assess the experiment’s impact on the system.

Culture:

The concept of intentionally causing chaos in a system can be a hard sell to stakeholders, particularly those who are responsible for maintaining stability and reliability. Building a culture of experimentation and risk-taking is essential to the success of a chaos engineering program.

Right Tools:

The tools used for chaos engineering can be challenging to implement and use, requiring a high degree of technical expertise.

Scalability:

As systems grow and become more complex, the challenges of performing chaos engineering also increase. It can be difficult to design experiments that scale to the size of a large-scale system and to interpret the results of those experiments in a meaningful way.

Time Constraints:

Chaos engineering experiments can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, requiring significant effort and planning to be executed effectively.

Lack of Standardization:

There is currently no standard methodology for performing chaos engineering, making it difficult to compare results between organizations and determine best practices.

Despite these challenges, many organizations are finding that the benefits of chaos engineering, including improved resiliency, reduced downtime, and faster incident response times, make it a valuable investment.

Overcoming the Challenges of Performing Chaos Engineering

Planning and Preparation:

Before performing any chaos experiments, planning and preparing for the process is important. This involves identifying potential areas of risk, defining objectives, and setting clear expectations for the outcome of the experiments.

Communication and Collaboration:

Good communication and collaboration between team members are key to overcoming challenges in chaos engineering. This includes working with stakeholders to educate them about the process, involving them in planning and preparation, and keeping them informed about the results of experiments.

Automated Testing and Monitoring:

Automated testing and monitoring tools can help to overcome some of the challenges of chaos engineering by reducing the time and effort required to perform experiments and by providing real-time feedback on system behavior.

Documentation and Reporting:

Keeping detailed records of experiments, their results, and any lessons learned is critical to overcoming challenges in chaos engineering. This includes documenting the steps taken during each experiment, any issues encountered, and how they were resolved.

Continuous Improvement:

Overcoming the challenges of chaos engineering requires a continuous cycle of improvement. This includes regularly reviewing and refining processes and tools, as well as incorporating feedback from team members to improve the overall effectiveness of the chaos engineering program.

By following these tips and practices, organizations can overcome the key challenges of performing chaos engineering and realize the benefits of this powerful technique for improving system resilience and reliability.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Chaos Engineering is a proactive approach to testing and improving the reliability and resilience of systems, and its importance lies in improving the overall health of the systems and reducing the risk of outages and downtime.

Chaos engineering is commonly used in software engineering. Still, it can also be applied to other systems, such as distributed systems, cloud computing systems, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) systems. Overall, chaos engineering aims to help organizations build more reliable and resilient systems by testing and validating them before they are put into production.

How TestingXperts Helps Businesses with Chaos Engineering?

TestingXperts (Tx) is one of the Top 5 largest pure-play software testing services providers globally. Tx has been chosen as a trusted QA partner by Fortune clients and ensures superior testing outcomes for its global clientele. We have rich expertise in enabling end-to-end testing services for global clients across various industry domains like healthcare, telecom, BFSI, retail & eCommerce, etc.

With our domain knowledge and with over a decade of pure play testing experience, the company has been serving the global clientele with high-quality next-gen testing services to deliver superior solutions to clients.

TestingXperts believes that chaos engineering, when performed effectively, helps digital businesses achieve their product quality goals to their full potential. Our team of experts provides comprehensive services to help businesses implement chaos engineering and achieve better resilience, reliability, and performance.

Our Services Include:

Strategy Development:

Our team will work with you to develop a chaos engineering strategy tailored to your specific needs. We will help you understand the goals of chaos engineering, the key principles involved, and the best approach to implementing it in your organization.

Identify and implement right tool set:

Our experienced team helps you identify the best possible tools according to your custom business requirements.

Implementation and Training:

We will provide expert guidance and support to help you implement chaos engineering in your organization. Our team will train your staff on how to perform chaos experiments, interpret the results, and use the insights to improve the resilience of your systems.

Chaos Engineering Consultation:

Our team of experts is available to provide consultation on any aspect of chaos engineering. We can help you identify potential areas for improvement, recommend best practices, and provide guidance on resolving any challenges you may encounter.

Managed Chaos Engineering:

We can manage the entire process if you prefer to outsource your chaos engineering needs. This includes planning and executing chaos experiments, analyzing the results, and providing recommendations for improvement.

Tx’s Chaos Engineering Differentiators

• Quicker experimentation with controlled risk

• Measure results in real-time

• Minimize downtime

• Identify areas of improvement

• Classify system bottlenecks and achieve minimum business disruptions due to failure of complex and distributed systems

• Ensure seamless working of interdependencies in complex systems

• Enable contingency plans to respond to system outages

• Ensure business continuity even after system failure by resuming systems to operational states without any impact on end users

The post How Can Businesses Build Resilient Apps with Chaos Engineering? first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/cloud-performance-testing?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=6-best-practices-for-cloud-performance-testing Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:18:15 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=25114

Performance testing is essential to achieve a successful app that meets user expectations in terms of performance, security, reliability, and more. By leveraging end-to-end cloud performance testing, digital businesses achieve high-performing and scalable apps within the predefined budget and timelines. In this blog, we bring you the best practices of cloud performance testing for a seamless and robust app.

The post 6 Best Practices for Cloud Performance Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

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Content 1. An overview of cloud performance testing 2. What needs to be Tested? 3. Cloud Performance Testing or Inhouse Testing? 4. Seven business benefits of cloud performance testing 5. Types of cloud performance testing 6. Six best practices for cloud performance testing 7. Key cloud performance testing metrics 8. Top cloud performance testing tools 9. Conclusion 10. How can Tx help?

An overview of cloud performance testing

Today, digital businesses race to launch high-quality applications as early as possible, and time to market plays an important role in determining the application’s success. However, without effective testing, the final product could be futile. There is always a need for tools and techniques that accelerate the development and testing process.

Performance testing simulates heavy loads and assesses the performance of apps and infrastructure to ensure that downtime doesn’t derail a business’s cashflows, promotions, and peak business times.

But on-premise testing comes at a price, takes significant time, needs dedicated infrastructure and has certain limitations. This is where cloud performance testing proves to be a wise business decision. Cloud performance testing is comparatively inexpensive and may be used for testing cloud, web, and installed applications. It uses cloud-based tools to emulate real-world traffic and helps businesses measure their apps’ performance, scalability, security, and reliability.

What needs to be Tested?

Cloud performance testing centers around evaluating three fundamental aspects:

Swiftness – Verifying the application’s responsiveness and promptness.

Expandability – Assessing the upper threshold of user load the application can manage.

Reliability – Ensuring the application’s stability across diverse load conditions.

Fundamentally, the objective of performance testing is not the discovery of defects or bugs, but rather the eradication of potential performance bottlenecks that could arise within an application. It’s occasionally denoted as “Perf Testing,” constituting a subset of the broader domain of performance engineering.

Cloud Performance Testing or Inhouse Testing?

In the past, conventional in-house performance testing constituted a resource-intensive undertaking and placed a strain on IT departments. It necessitated intricate infrastructure and substantial resources that were frequently utilized only intermittently.

As business paradigms evolve and operational frameworks extend beyond physical office spaces, maintaining in-house testing facilities is growing increasingly challenging for organizations. Cloud-based testing tools deviate from conventional in-house applications. Performance testing in the cloud assesses metrics such as the system’s throughput and latency in response to varying numbers of concurrent users accessing the application. Additionally, it gauges diverse load profiles and an array of performance parameters.

Elasticity stands as a pivotal attribute within cloud infrastructure, encapsulating the cloud’s capacity to effectively manage fluctuations in load by augmenting resources during peak demands or rationalizing user distribution when loads diminish. This dynamic adjustment takes place seamlessly within an operational cloud environment.

Scalability, availability, fault tolerance, and reliability constitute additional components that contribute to an ideal cloud infrastructure.

Moreover, cloud-based load testing offers the opportunity to attain peak performance through a cost-efficient approach to testing applications at an expansive scale. This is achieved by simulating load tests encompassing millions of concurrent users originating from diverse geographical locations.

Seven business benefits of cloud performance testing

Cloud performance testing ensures the application runs as intended in a cloud environment with optimum infrastructure and offers the desired user experience. Knowing that the application is at par with the performance standards, digital businesses can focus on scalability, flexibility, and reduced overhead for research and development. Here are the seven key advantages of cloud performance testing:

Supports testing scalability:

While leveraging a cloud-based testing platform, digital businesses do not have to limit the number of users for performance testing. Cloud performance testing is more realistic regarding visits from an expected number of users and from different geo locations just like peak business hours or holiday seasons.

Eases app customization:

Using a cloud system to test applications is advantageous for organizations because they can use it to emulate customer-centric environments. Cloud testing enables the utilization of various permutations of test scenarios that include different configurations, web browsers, OS, and more. As a result, businesses can make the necessary customizations to save costs and time in procuring different devices at different locations.

Supports geographical testing:

Cloud performance testing may be executed from anywhere. In other words, businesses can test their apps globally wherever the app will be available, hence enabling global scalability.

Supports testing for production apps/system:

Application tests are generally limited to their test environment, but it is possible to execute cloud performance testing in production environments.

Reduces overall costs:

Using the cloud as a testing platform reduces the need for installation and maintenance configuration, reducing overall costs.

Improves team collaboration:

Cloud-based testing allows software companies to include DevOps in their workflows because it requires collaboration between developers and testers. Testers can spin up test environments with different configurations and data in the cloud, automate testing processes, integrate with development tools to provide fast feedback and get DevOps to help set up devices.

Enables enterprise app coverage:

While most applications today are browser-based, large enterprise apps require relatively higher computing capabilities. Cloud-based testing enables effective testing with support for various internet protocols, .NET, Java, SAP, Siebel, and other enterprise application protocols to validate web 2.0 applications like AJAX, Silverlight, and Flex.

Types of cloud performance testing

Load test – performed to measure the performance of the application under normal and peak conditions

Failover test – performed to validate the app’s ability to provide extra resources and engage a backup system during system failure

Capacity/volume test – performed to measure the number of users the app can handle before experiencing any issues

Soak test – performed to measure the performance of the application under extreme loads for an extended period

Stress test – performed to measure the performance of the app when exposed to conditions outside of the scope of regular operations

Browser test – validates that the application works as intended when accessed through different web browsers

Targeted infrastructure test – isolates and measures each layer and/or component of the application to test its performance

Latency test – measures the amount of time it takes to move a data packet from one point to another within the network

Six best practices for cloud performance testing

Evaluate the latest load testing tools and models:

Some of the available load-generating apps work across cloud platforms but verifying the compatibility of such tools with the application architecture is essential. Key features such as bandwidth simulation, upload/download speeds, etc., should be accurately represented to understand the load limits.

Leverage automation and scheduling:

Choose the load testing tools that include features such as analytics, reports, and scheduling. This helps DevOps teams avoid overworking production systems while testing and scheduling the ongoing load tests. Once the tests are completed, these tools share comprehensive reports with the respective stakeholders so that everyone has a clear picture of how the app is performing.

Test inside/outside the firewall:

In case of several possible reasons for poor app performance, it is difficult to identify the root cause. The load test plan should include testing both inside and outside the firewall to find and fix the performance bottlenecks.

Simulate real conditions:

Merely exposing the app to high loads until failure may not generate a realistic scenario. Similar is the case with using similar types of devices, browsers, bandwidths, or OS. The load testing environment should be able to provide a diverse range of test scenarios, keeping the user load at a base level with different configurations.

Prioritize the bugs:

To maximize the value of cloud performance testing, teams must prioritize the bugs. Once the data and insights are available, teams should strategically take necessary actions to achieve the maximum ROI from testing efforts.

Consider users as well as servers:

Performance tests are often focused on servers and clusters. However, these tests should measure the human element as well. Cloud performance testing should consider UX for comprehensive test results.

Key cloud performance testing metrics

Cloud performance testing varies from the traditional types of application testing. The main aim of cloud performance testing is to measure the key performance parameters. The following are the critical performance testing metrics digital businesses must consider:

CPU utilization:

The percentage of CPU capacity utilized in processing the requests.

Memory utilization:

Measures the utilization of the computer’s primary memory while processing any work requests.

Response times:

The total time between sending and receiving the request. Better the response time, the better the performance of the application.

Average load time:

This metric determines the time a webpage takes to load and display the content on the screen.

Throughput:

This metric determines the number of transactions an application can handle per second.

Average latency/Wait time:

The time spent by request in a queue before processing.

Bandwidth:

It measures the data volume transferred every second.

Requests per second:

This metric measures the number of requests the app handles every second.

Error rate:

It measures the percentage of requests leading to errors compared to the total number of requests.

Transactions Passed/Failed:

The percentage of passed/failed transactions against the total number of transactions.

Top cloud performance testing tools

Tricentis NeoLoad:

Provides automatic test design and maintenance, simulation of user behavior, fast root cause analysis, and built-in integrations with the entire software development lifecycle toolchain.

CloudTest:

Enables continuous testing process in the cloud without worrying about any hardware.

BlazeMeter:

Facilitates the desired number of users, user behavior, and duration through custom-built load and stress testing scenarios.

AppPerfect:

Helps to design and simulate thousands of users to load test applications for performance, reliability, and scalability.

Azure Load Test:

Used to run URL-based load tests with Azure DevOps and sets all the required parameters to run the test.

SmartBear LoadNinja:

Produces intelligent and accurate data that helps analyze the performance of websites, web applications, and APIs in real-time using accurate browser-based metrics.

LoadView:

Uses the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to generate concurrent user load over the cloud during the load tests.

Conclusion

Performance testing is essential to the app’s success in DevOps processes. A high-performing app is critical for businesses to yield the expected ROI while enabling a great CX to the end users. By leveraging the cloud for performance testing, digital businesses can achieve high-performing and scalable apps without blowing out on costs and timelines. Thus, enterprises should leverage cloud performance testing from a next-gen QA and independent software testing services provider for high-performing apps and faster time to market.

How can Tx help?

TestingXperts (Tx) is a leading performance and load testing service provider for businesses across domains. Leverage next-gen testing services provider for your solutions’ end-to-end digital and performance testing to deliver a seamless user experience.

• Predict application behavior and benchmark application performance

• Ensure your application is responsive, reliable, robust, and scalable

• Ensure your application meets all contractual obligations and SLAs for performance

• Comprehensive performance & load testing services across domains and technologies

• Detailed reporting with response times, breakpoints, peak load, memory leaks, resource utilization, uptime, etc.

• Get in touch with our performance testing experts to know more.

The post 6 Best Practices for Cloud Performance Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/ecommerce-performance-testing-black-friday?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=boost-your-black-friday-sales-with-ecommerce-performance-testing Tue, 04 Oct 2022 13:37:37 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=24787

Content 1. Some Popular Incidents of Website Crashes During Black Fridays 2. The Real Cost of eCommerce Site Crashes on Black Friday 3. eCommerce Performance Testing for Black Friday 2023 and Beyond 4. Conclusion 5. How can Tx help? Last year’s Black Friday set new records for eCommerce, and 2023 shows no signs of slowing … Continue reading "Boost your Black Friday Sales with eCommerce Performance Testing"

The post Boost your Black Friday Sales with eCommerce Performance Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

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Content 1. Some Popular Incidents of Website Crashes During Black Fridays 2. The Real Cost of eCommerce Site Crashes on Black Friday 3. eCommerce Performance Testing for Black Friday 2023 and Beyond 4. Conclusion 5. How can Tx help?

Last year’s Black Friday set new records for eCommerce, and 2023 shows no signs of slowing down. People are already planning for Christmas this year, the holiday shopping-inspired rush of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is approaching fast.

Millions of online shoppers look forward to visiting the eCommerce stores on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year to shop for the latest sale items. Customers search for the best deals while expecting a fun and frictionless shopping experience. Unprepared eCommerce stores with slow or crashing applications will, however, disappoint the buyers, who will eventually move to their competitor sites.

It’s a no-brainer; customers will choose the sites where the shopping experience is user-friendly and frictionless.

Some Popular Incidents of Website Crashes During Black Fridays

• Walmart and GameStop Corp. experienced website outages, site crashes, slow load time, and other performance issues during Cyber 5.

• Crew, the American multi-brand apparel and accessories retailer, lost $775,000 in sales and disappointed more than 323,000 shoppers in one holiday afternoon.

• GlassesUSA, the online retailer for prescription glasses, encountered 502 Bad Gateway server problems during CyberWeek and lost hefty site traffic.

• Costco faced losses worth $11 million as the website faced performance issues and went down for more than 16 Hrs.

The Real Cost of eCommerce Site Crashes on Black Friday

As seen in many reports and surveys, digital shopping is the future. It’s especially true during the holiday season when deal-hungry consumers rush to the online stores and fill their shopping carts. As the holiday season approaches, eCommerce businesses are concerned about their websites experiencing crashes and other performance issues.

Retailers have realized that Black Friday is no longer a single-day event. Customers seek great deals and discounts days in advance and wish them to last through the holiday season of Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, and Christmas.

When eCommerce sites are unprepared to handle the performance and load during peak hours, they look at irreparable damage to their businesses. Apart from the heavy revenue losses businesses face during such crashes, non-performing sites also lead to irreparable loss of brand credibility and customer loyalty.

eCommerce Performance Testing for Black Friday 2023 and Beyond

eCommerce apps are complex platforms with multiple features like payment options, search options, cart, and product details. Each functionality should perform seamlessly to deliver the best user experience. This requires thorough eCommerce performance testing to evaluate whether the app can handle the sudden surge during the holiday season. Performance testing highlights the performance-related problems with the app long before the customers do. Here is how eCommerce apps should be tested for performance and scalability.

Perform speed and load testing:

eCommerce businesses should consider load tests to understand the estimated load handling capacity. A robust and effective load testing strategy should ensure that the website or the mobile application handles the anticipated load without crashing. Leveraging analytics from previous years’ traffic, it is recommended to estimate loads and run eCommerce performance testing accordingly. Critical user paths that should be tested include the login page, registration page, products, checkout, shopping carts, and similar pages.

Ensure the website is running seamlessly:

Mobile apps and web apps should be made to perform seamlessly and handle numerous transactions without any glitches. Retailers should see that their web and mobile apps are tested for both their functional and non-functional app components to ensure they deliver a great customer experience to provide seamless transactions across the value chain from adding to cart till the transaction, along with seamless gateway passage until check out.

Ensure safe and secure online transactions to customers:

With the rampant cyber-attacks continuing, eCommerce businesses should ensure their customers’ critical data is secure and safe and that no personal transaction data is exposed to any security attack. Security testing should be taken up to ensure these web apps and mobile apps are free from cyber threats, especially during the holiday season when online transactions are at an all-time high.

Ensure website accessibility:

eCommerce web apps should be accessible to specially-abled people. When testing for accessibility, the key areas to consider are color blindness, impaired vision, blindness, deafness, hearing impairment, motor impairment, etc. People with disabilities also want to shop online from the comfort of their homes, and accessibility testing ensures they, too, have a seamless shopping experience.

Ensure seamless customer experience (CX):

Identify the weak points in UI/UX and make the necessary updates to provide an intuitive interaction with the eCommerce app. eCommerce organizations should focus on the system’s ease of use and streamline critical features such as easy browsing, user-friendly navigation, handy catalog, and so on.

Ensure usability across website features:

Online retailers should ensure that the application is easy to use and that the users are able to find their products within a few clicks. The interface should be intuitive and not confuse users on finding the products from the list, making payments, etc. If the website’s interface is hard to use, the users might be convinced to look elsewhere.

Ensure mobile-readiness of apps:

Multiple devices or platforms may be involved throughout a customer’s buying journey. Customers may research their products on their smartphones and then place their orders on their iPad or other mobile devices. As a result, multi-device testing on eCommerce apps should be performed across various mobile devices, operating systems, and browsers to ensure a seamless sales transition from platform to platform.

Conclusion

Retailers and eCommerce businesses worldwide will try to make the most out of the upcoming holiday sales. But, to reap significant benefits from the shopping season, effective performance and holiday readiness of apps are important to meet the peak load requirements. Businesses must leverage eCommerce performance testing for high-performing, holiday-ready apps that do not hamper the sales flows while customers continue to buy the products online. Performance testing is crucial for any eCommerce business wishing to keep its credibility during the holiday season, maximize revenues, and keep customers happy. However, this complex process requires high levels of technical expertise and an understanding of performance testing tools, methodologies, and best practices.

TestingXperts (Tx) is a leading performance and load testing service provider for businesses across domains. Leverage next-gen testing services provider for end-to-end digital and performance testing of your systems to deliver a seamless shopping experience to your users this holiday season.

How can Tx help?

Prevent Black Friday Crashes by leveraging our performance testing accelerator Tx-PEARS.

Tx-PEARS:

It is an in-house developed robust framework that helps with all your non-functional testing requirements, including continuous monitoring of your infrastructure in production and lower environments. A consolidated platform to perform security, performance, and accessibility testing to deliver scalable, robust, reliable, and accessible apps to all. This tool can be leveraged to fine-tune your app’s performance effectively as it:

• Ensures to deliver quality products with effective non-functional testing services enabled through a single framework

• Provides actionable tuning recommendations to the development team which need to be implemented to get high app performance

• Provides detailed insights into the performance bottlenecks at the application server, web server, and database server level

• Helps improve the overall lifecycle of the identified performance issues

• Proides detailed reports to the clients and stakeholders to gather actionable insights

The post Boost your Black Friday Sales with eCommerce Performance Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing-metrics?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=performance-testing-metrics-a-detailed-guide-for-businesses Tue, 10 May 2022 15:48:42 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=22402

This week, in our weekly blog series, we have come up with an interesting blog on 'Performance Testing Metrics- A Detailed Guide for Businesses.'

Performance is a critical factor that determines the success of an app or website. Businesses should leverage performance testing for scalable and robust apps and must track its effectiveness leveraging performance testing metrics. Effective tracking of performance testing metrics helps to improve the software's performance and quality. Read this detailed guide on performance testing metrics to know more.

The post Performance Testing Metrics – A Detailed Guide for Businesses first appeared on TestingXperts.

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For today’s business-critical apps/websites, performance is an essential factor that determines its success in enabling a seamless user experience (UX). These business apps should be free from all performance bottlenecks such as slow loading speed, frequent time out/crashes, delayed response times, etc. It is also critical that the web apps/mobile apps be scalable, reliable, and robust to deliver effective end-user performance. Therefore, to ensure business-critical apps perform seamlessly, it is essential to measure performance testing metrics.

Content

1. What is performance testing?
2. An overview of performance testing metrics
3. What is the need for performance testing metrics?
4. Important performance testing metrics
5. Performance testing metrics categories
6. Some important performance automation testing tools
7. Conclusion
8. How can we help businesses fine-tune apps/systems leveraging our performance testing accelerator Tx-PEARS?

What is performance testing?

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing method used to check the speed, scalability, reliability, responsiveness, and performance of an app/website. Various performance testing methods include a spike, volume, endurance, stress, load, etc. These performance testing types help determine the app performance under fluctuating networks, varying user loads, varying bandwidths, etc. During performance testing, certain key performance indicators (KPIs), also known as performance testing metrics, are used to measure the effectiveness of this testing method. These KPIs define the effectiveness of the performance tests for businesses.

An overview of performance testing metrics

Performance testing metrics are the measures or parameters gathered during the performance and load testing processes. With the help of these metrics, performance test engineers or UAT teams determine the success of the performance testing process and further identify the critical areas in the software that needs more attention/improvement.

What is the need for performance testing metrics?

• Reflects current performance of the application, infrastructure, and network

•  Compares the test results and helps to analyze the impact of code changes

•  Determines the success of the overall performance testing process

•  Enables QA teams to make informed decisions and improve the quality of software

Important performance testing metrics

CPU utilization:

It is the percentage of CPU capacity utilized in processing the requests.

Memory utilization:

This metric measures the utilization of the primary memory of the computer while processing any work requests.

Response times:

It is the total time between sending the request and receiving the response. Better the response time, better the performance of website/application.

Average load time:

This metric measures the time taken by a webpage to complete the loading process and appear on the user screen.

Throughput:

It measures the number of transactions an application can handle in a second, or in other words, it is the rate at which a network or computer receives the requests per second.

Average latency/Wait time:

It is the time spent by a request in a queue before getting processed.

Bandwidth:

It is the measurement of the volume of data transferred per second.

Requests per second:

This metric refers to the number of requests handled by the application per second.

Error rate:

It is the percentage of requests resulting in errors compared to the total number of requests.

Transactions Passed/Failed:

It is the percentage of passed/failed transactions against the total number of transactions.

Performance testing metrics categories

1. Client-side performance testing metrics:

During performance testing, QA teams evaluate the client-side performance of the software. It includes the evaluation of end-to-end test scenarios and the apt rendering of front-end elements like CSS and JavaScript files. These client-side performance testing metrics help evaluate the application response for different clients using various devices (desktop, mobile, etc.) and servers. Some of the common client-side performance testing metrics are:

KPI Metrics	Description
Time To First Byte (TTFB)	It measures the web server’s responsiveness and is the total duration starting from the user making an HTTP request to the first byte of the page received by the client’s browser.
Page size/weight	It is the overall size of a particular webpage
Time to Interact	It is the time taken by a website to become fully interactive
Time to Render	It is the amount of time taken by a web page to load or reload
Speed Index	It measures how quickly the content is displayed during page load
Load Time	It is the average amount of time a page takes to show up on your screen.
Payload	It is the difference between essential information in a chunk of data and the information used to support it.

Most commonly used client-side performance testing tools:

Tool Name	Description
Pagespeed Insights	Google Pagespeed Insights is an open-source and free tool that helps you find and fix issues that slows your web application performance. This tool is used to analyze the content of a web page and provides page speed scores for mobile and desktop web pages.
Lighthouse	Google Lighthouse is an open-source and automated tool used or improving the quality of web pages. It can be against any web page, public or that which requires authentication.
GTmetrix	It is a website performance testing and monitoring tool. It analyses the page speed & performance and provides recommendations to fix those issues.
YSlow	It is an open-source performance testing tool that analyzes websites and gives suggestions to improve their performance.

2. Server-side performance testing metrics:

The performance of the server directly affects the performance of an application. Therefore, it is essential to measure the performance of servers leveraging server performance monitoring metrics. Some of the key server performance monitoring metrics are:

KPI Metrics	Description
Requests per Second (RPS)	It is the number of requests an information retrieval system such as a search engine handles in one second.
Uptime	It is the overall size of a particular webpage
Error Rates	It is the percentage of requests resulting in errors compared to the total number of requests.
Thread Counts	It is the number of concurrent requests that the server receives at a particular time.
Peak Response Time	It measures the roundtrip of a request/response cycle but focuses on the longest cycle rather than taking an average.
Throughput	It measures the number of requests an application can handle in a second.
Bandwidth	It is the maximum data capacity that can be transferred over a network in one second.

Most commonly used server-side performance monitoring tools:

Tool Name	Description
New Relic	It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that focuses on performance and availability monitoring. It uses a standardized Apdex (application performance index) score to set and rate application performance across the environment in a unified manner.
AppDynamics	It is an application performance management solution that provides the required metrics of server monitoring tools and also comes with the troubleshooting capabilities of APM software.
Datadog	It is a performance monitoring and analytics tool that helps IT and DevOps teams determine performance metrics.
SolarWinds NPA and DPA	SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is an affordable and easy-to-use performance testing tool that delivers real-time views and dashboards. This tool also helps to track and monitor network performance at a glance visually. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is an automation tool that is used to monitor, diagnose, and resolve performance problems for various types of database instances, both self-managed and in the cloud
Dynatrace	This performance monitoring tool is used to monitor the entire infrastructure, including hosts, processes, and networks. It enables log monitoring and can also be used to view information such as network total traffic, CPU usage, response time, etc.

Some important performance automation testing tools

JMeter:

It is an open-source performance and load testing tool used to measure the performance of applications and software. JMeter simulates a heavy load on the server and creates multiple simultaneous virtual users on a webserver to enable effective load testing. It can be used to effectively track, interpret, and analyze the performance testing results. Some of the key metrics of JMeter are Elapsed Time, Latency, Connect Time, Median, 90% Line (90^th Percentile), Standard Deviation, Thread Name, Throughput, etc.

LoadView:

It is an easy-to-use performance testing tool and provides insights into vital performance testing metrics for organizations. LoadView allows the user to view test execution in real-time to see a graphical representation of the execution plan, average response times, and errors. It provides detailed level statics, including key performance testing metrics such as maximum, actual, and expected number of virtual users, the average response time of transactions, number of sessions, session errors, load injector CPU usage, DNS Time, Connect Time, SSL Time, etc.

LoadNinja:

It is a cloud-based load testing and performance testing platform. LoadNinja produces intelligent and accurate data that helps analyze the performance of websites, web applications, and APIs in real-time using accurate browser-based metrics. Some of the key metrics of LoadNinja include Virtual users, 90^th Percentile Duration, 95^th Percentile Duration, Standard Deviations, Total Iterations, Total Timeouts, Total Page errors, etc.

Conclusion

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing method used to check software’s speed, scalability, reliability, and responsiveness. For businesses to know the effectiveness of performance testing within the enterprise, certain performance testing metrics should be known. These metrics help determine the success and the progress of the performance testing process. Typically, effective tracking of performance testing metrics helps improve the software’s performance and quality. Leverage performance testing from a next-gen QA and independent software testing company for effective performance and load testing services and get high-performing, high-quality, scalable, and robust software.

How can we help businesses fine-tune apps/systems leveraging our performance testing accelerator Tx-PEARS?

Tx-PEARS:

It is an in-house developed robust framework that helps with all your non-functional testing requirements, including continuous monitoring of your infrastructure in production and in lower environments. A consolidated platform to perform security, performance, and accessibility testing to deliver scalable, robust, reliable, and accessible apps to all

This tool can be leveraged to fine-tune your app’s performance effectively:

•  Ensures to deliver quality products with effective non-functional testing services enabled through a single framework

•  It provides actionable tuning recommendations to the development team which need to be implemented to get high app performance

•  Through Tx- PEARS, detailed insights into the performance bottlenecks at the application server, web server, and database server level are identified

•  Through Tx-Pears overall lifecycle of the identified performance issues can be improved

•  Detailed reports are delivered to the clients and stakeholders to gather actionable insights

The post Performance Testing Metrics – A Detailed Guide for Businesses first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing-in-devops/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blog-performance-testing-in-devops Thu, 03 Feb 2022 10:22:45 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=21202

This week in our weekly blog series we have come with a blog on ‘How to Do Performance Testing In DevOps? Every business needs high-performing and seamless applications (mobile & web) in less time to increase user engagement and to deliver a great customer experience (CX). This is where the need for performance testing in DevOps comes into the picture. Read this blog to know more.

The post How to Do Performance Testing in DevOps? first appeared on TestingXperts.

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Every business needs high-performing and seamless applications (mobile & web) to increase user engagement and deliver a great customer experience (CX). Today, businesses continue to embrace DevOps to get faster releases and high-quality software that embeds continuous integration, continuous testing, and delivery. The DevOps continuous testing involves functional, performance, security, and other testing methods to ensure flawless, high-quality apps. Specifically, performance testing plays a critical role in improving the scalability, reliability, and robustness of the apps before they are released into the market.

Content 1. What is Performance Testing? 2. Some of the Use cases of Performance testing 3. Benefits of performance testing 4. Various types of Performance Testing 5. An overview of performance testing in DevOps 6. Performance testing in DevOps CI/CD pipeline 7. Performance testing process overview 8. Performance testing metrics to measure mobile app performance 9. How is performance testing important for data migration and ETL testing? 10. Significance of think time in performance testing 11. An overview of automated performance testing tools 12. Conclusion

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing method performed to check the software’s speed, responsiveness, scalability, stability, and reliability. The primary aim of this testing method is to remove performance bottlenecks from the app/software and ensure seamless performance under all conditions such as varying user loads, fluctuating networks, varying network bandwidths, etc.

Some of the Use cases of Performance testing

• Checking app performance by simultaneously running multiple applications in the background

• Verifying app performance when multiple users login at the same time

• Checking app performance by suddenly increasing/decreasing user load

• Checking app performance under various types of networks, such as Wi-Fi, LAN, 3G, 4G, etc.

• Checking app responsiveness by taking into consideration the app response to user queries

Benefits of performance testing

1. Improves website speed:

Common issues like broken images, content-related issues, frequent timeouts, etc., hamper the website speed. This non-functional testing method helps identify and resolve these issues, thus enhancing the website speed.

2. Removes performance bottlenecks from apps:

This software testing ensures the removal of critical bugs and performance bottlenecks from the software before it goes live.

3. Ensures scalability, reliability, and robustness of apps:

This testing type ensures that the software is scalable and can handle users even during peak loads. It ensures that the software performs well under unexpected situations like fluctuating networks, bandwidths, user load, etc. Thus, it ensures the software’s scalability, reliability, and robustness.

4. Enhances customer experience (CX):

End-users don’t prefer slow-loading apps and websites. This testing method helps in improving the app’s performance and speed, which ultimately enhances the CX.

5. Helps to generate more revenue:

It is known that end-users prefer apps with seamless performance. Better app performance will generate more revenue for businesses as users prefer to download such seamless apps, especially for eCommerce, telecom, and healthcare sector apps.

Various types of Performance Testing

1. Load Testing:

Testers perform this testing by simulating the number of virtual users that might use the application. The principal aim of this testing method is to ensure that the application performs well under normal and peak user loads.

2. Stress Testing:

This testing technique helps identify the system’s breaking point when user load is increased beyond the expected peak.

3. Endurance Testing:

This testing helps identify any resource leakage in the system, while it is subjected to normal user load for an extended duration like 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, or 48 hours, etc.

4. Spike Testing:

It is a subset of stress testing and checks the system’s behavior by suddenly varying the no. of users. This testing checks if the system can handle the variations in user load.

5. Volume Testing:

In this testing method, multiple data-intensive transactions are performed to validate how the system performs under such data volumes.

6. Scalability Testing:

This testing method determines the capability of the system to scale up in terms of user load, data volume, number of transactions, etc. The main aim of this testing method is to determine the peak point beyond which the system prevents more scaling.

7. Component-level performance testing:

An application comprises minor components that are the smallest parts of an application. In component-level performance testing, the individual components of the application are tested to ensure the effective performance of components in isolation. Later, all the app components are tested as a group to ensure a high-performing and fully integrated application. Further, these components are integrated, and finally, performance testing is executed after integration.

An overview of performance testing in DevOps

Businesses continue to embrace DevOps to get faster releases and high-quality in less time. This DevOps methodology promotes collaboration between teams to deliver faster and quality releases to the customer. The DevOps lifecycle includes various stages such as Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Testing (CT), and Continuous Delivery (CD). Typically, to ensure the release of high-quality software in less time, performance testing in DevOps plays a critical role. Moreover, performance testing in DevOps is done by integrating continuous and automated performance testing in the continuous delivery pipeline. However, to take up performance and load testing in DevOps, a series of steps should be followed at each stage of the DevOps lifecycle.

Performance testing in DevOps CI/CD pipeline

Performance testing in DevOps involves continuous performance evaluation at each DevOps CI/CD pipeline stage and ensures faster feedback loops for software improvement. 

1. Code and build stage:

DevOps performance testing starts with continuous performance testing at the build stage, which involves unit performance testing. In this stage, the smallest unit of the software is checked to ensure they perform well in isolation.

2. Integration stage:

Once the unit performance testing is done, performance testing is done at the integration stage, where the smallest units of the software are integrated. The performance of these integrated units/modules is tested to ensure the effective performance of modules after integration.

3. Test stage:

During this stage, system-level performance testing is done to ensure the software performs well as expected. Once the system-level performance tests are passed, the software moves to the release and deploy stage.

4. Release and deploy stage:

During this stage, load testing and real user monitoring are performed to ensure that the software handles the user load effectively in the production environment.

5. Monitoring stage:

After the software reaches the monitoring stage, continuous performance monitoring is done, where various performance metrics are evaluated to determine areas that need improvement.

Performance testing process overview

1. Prepare performance testing checklist:

Testers should prepare a checklist before starting the test. Performance testing checklist includes what is to be tested, pass/fail criteria, user scenarios, issues to be monitored, etc. While preparing the checklist, testers need to gather the client’s requirements. 

2. Plan the test:

Prepare a test plan or test strategy which covers the aim and scope of testing, application architecture, environment details, testing tools, roles, responsibilities, etc.

3. Setup the test environment:

Testers need to set up the test environment. There are two types of test environments, on-premise, and on-cloud. The test environment should be chosen wisely, as the effectiveness of the testing process largely depends on the environment in which it is executed. Load generation environment should be configured to generate virtual load for load testing of the software.

4. Prepare test data:

To set up the test data, testers need to first extract test data, modify the data for testing the software, and generate enough test data to perform the tests.

5. Prepare test scripts, execute the test and analyze the results:

This is an important step that involves preparation of test scripts, execution of test cases, and analysis of test results to know whether it is pass or fail.

6. Fix the bugs:

The Dev team resolves all the bugs found during the testing process. Once all the bugs are fixed, the testing process is repeated to ensure defects are fixed.

7. Prepare test report:

Document all the test findings in one place and share the test report with all the stakeholders and project team.

Performance testing metrics to measure mobile app performance

1. App installation time:

This metric gives the user a first impression of the app. This metric measures the app installation time and how it can be improved.

2. App launch time:

App launch time or app start time is another important metric that must be checked in an application. Ideally, it should not be more than 1 to 2 seconds.

3. App background processing:

It is essential to ensure that app performance remains unaffected when multiple apps run parallelly. It is essential to ensure that no data loss should happen when the app runs in the background and is retrieved.

4. Client-side resource usage:

An app should not consume excess memory and must not heat the device, especially when it runs in the background. Thus, checking an app’s CPU usage and memory during its execution is essential.

5. Response time:

This metric measures the time is taken by an app to respond to a given input. Faster response time ensures less wait time and high performance of the app.

6. Average load time:

Load time of app/website and page load time is very important for users and businesses. Faster loading time or speed ensures better performance of an app.

7. Bandwidth and network compatibility:

Varying bandwidth and fluctuating networks affect the app loading time. However, to ensure effective app performance, it is essential to perform load testing of an app with minimal bandwidth and different network types and connections such as 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-FI, etc.

8. Concurrent users:

This metric measures how many virtual users are active or accessing the app at a given point in time. The number of users using the app directly impacts the app’s performance.

9. Requests per second:

It is the measure of how many requests by second the server can handle without degrading performance or resulting in error.

How is performance testing important for data migration and ETL testing?

Data migration is a complex but essential process for every business. Effective data migration helps businesses ensure better data availability, reduced cost, improved performance, and more. However, while migrating data from various sources to a new system, it is essential to ensure that the new system’s performance remains unaffected after migration. This is where the need for performance testing during data migration comes into the picture. In this testing type, various performance tests are executed on the system before and after migration to ensure the new system’s performance is not degraded post-migration.

Performance and load testing play a vital role in the Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) process. The data is extracted from various sources during the ETL process, transformed into a consistent data type, and then loaded into the data warehouse or target system. Performance testing in ETL is done to ensure that the ETL system can handle a high volume of transactions. Performance tests in ETL also verify the efficiency of the ETL system by determining the actual time taken by the system to process data. The lesser the data processing time, the higher is the efficiency.

Significance of think time in performance testing

Think time is the time difference between each action performed by the user. When users visit a website, they take some time to think and take action. The difference or the time gap between each action performed by the user is known as think time.

For example, suppose a user visits an eCommerce website. The user clicks on the products tab, selects the product, reads the description, and adds the product to the cart. The time spent between clicking on the product tab to clicking on the add to cart tab is considered think time.

Think time plays a very crucial role, as it represents the user’s actual behavior in the system. A user never does all actions like login, search product, add to cart, payment, log out in one go. The users take some time to complete all actions. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce think time in this non-functional software testing technique to create a real-world scenario in the testing environment.

Another reason to introduce think time in performance and load testing is that suppose if a tester executes software testing giving multiple requests with no pause, it will fail the server. The server also needs time to process requests and give the result. Therefore, it is essential to consider think time in performance and load testing.

An overview of automated performance testing tools

1. Apache JMeter:

It is an open-source tool that helps to analyze and measure the performance of a range of web applications. This tool supports various protocols, such as HTTP, HTTPS, XML, SOAP, Java-based protocols, etc. This non-functional software testing tool requires less scripting effort as compared to other tools and has simple charts/graphs that can be used for analyzing key load-related statistics and resource usage.

2. WebLOAD:

It is an enterprise-scale load testing tool that is used for web and mobile load testing. This tool comes with a good number of features and functionalities, such as Load Generation Console, Analytics Dashboard, and comprehensive IDE.

3. Stress Stimulus:

This tool is used to perform load testing of web apps, mobile apps, and enterprise apps. Stress stimulus supports on-premise or cloud load testing and works well with Fiddler. This tool comes with an end-to-end test wizard that eases the performance testing of mobile and web apps.

4. io:

It is a multiplatform performance and load testing tool. This tool allows adding performance testing into the continuous integration process, real-time monitoring of the test environment, and analyzing test results on multiple machines.

5. NeoLoad:

It is a continuous performance testing tool for desktop and mobile apps. This tool comes with great features like scriptless test creation, GUI-driven design, automated parameterization, etc. Neoload can be easily integrated with CI tools, and it allows real-time identification and removal of performance bottlenecks.

6. Load Runner:

It is the most widely used tool to test applications and measure system behavior and performance under varying loads. This tool is used to simulate thousands of concurrent users and record the variations in the system performance. This testing tool supports all advanced technologies like Ajax, Flex, HTML5.0, Java, SOAP, Citrix, along with all other legacy technologies.

7. LoadView:

It is used for cloud-based load testing, and it helps DevOps teams to test websites, web apps, and application programming interfaces (APIs) with thousands of concurrent users. This tool simulates API calls, validates API responses, and verifies the most important SLA requirements. The agile and DevOps teams can test their website’s UX under load, verify performance and identify various bottlenecks within the applications.

Conclusion

Performance testing is an essential element that determines the success of an application in DevOps processes. A high-performing app is the need of the hour for businesses and the low performance of the app can affect the brand reputation and even the CX. Hence, a well-developed performance testing method and proper automated tools should be leveraged to get high-performing and scalable apps. Thus, enterprises should leverage end-to-end performance testing from a next-gen QA and independent software testing services provider for high-performing software and faster time to market.

The post How to Do Performance Testing in DevOps? first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing-holiday-readiness-apps?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=significance-of-performance-testing-in-ensuring-holiday-readiness-of-apps Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:35:24 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=20632

This week in our weekly blog series we have come up with a blog on ‘Significance of Performance Testing in Ensuring Holiday Readiness of Apps.’

Every year retailers and customers across the world wait for the holiday season to begin. The exciting deals and amazing offers attract customers and make the holiday shopping season profitable for both parties. But, certain performance-related issues of eCommerce apps hampers the CX and affects their revenues. Businesses should leverage performance testing to ensure their eCommerce apps perform seamlessly this holiday season. Read this blog to know more.

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“If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of the business.” -Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft.

It seems like the above statement is turning into an unexpected reality with time. Due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the world have started shifting online. Though this sudden shift helped businesses to survive, it increased the level of competition among companies. And now, with the holiday season 2021 fast approaching, the competition among businesses is expected to grow more intense.

This year, the holiday shopping season, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is likely to be different and bigger than all previous years. Thus, for businesses to reap significant benefits from the holiday season 2021 and deliver a great shopping experience to customers, the holiday readiness of apps is critical.

Content 1. Top Predictions for the Holiday Season 2021 2. Common Challenges faced by Businesses During Holiday Sales 2020? “3. Role of Performance Testing for Holiday Readiness of Apps 4. Stats Depicting the Criticality of Performance Testing for Holiday Season 5. Major App Functionalities that need Effective Performance Testing 6. Performance Testing Types Businesses must Leverage for Holiday Readiness of Apps 7. 8 Key Performance Testing Metrics for Business Apps 8. Conclusion 9. How can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

Top Predictions for the Holiday Season 2021

The holiday season will start early: Keeping in view the trends of last year’s holiday season, which started early during mid-October 2020. It is expected that this year, the same trend will be followed, and businesses are expected to roll out early Black-Friday deals and offers.

M-commerce is expected to rise even more: Since mobile apps have become an inseparable part of human lives, this year, it is expected that more shoppers will prefer to use mobile apps for shopping. Thus, businesses need to ensure their mobile eCommerce apps and websites are ready for high user-load.

No more cookies and ad-tracking: According to Forbes, In March 2021, Google and Apple confirmed plans to end third-party cookies that track user movements across websites. It means that the only way left for online businesses to gain customer attention is by ensuring a great first impression on customers. Thus, businesses must ensure their eCommerce apps and websites load fast and perform well under all circumstances to deliver a great customer experience (CX).

Common Challenges faced by Businesses During Holiday Sales 2020?

Undoubtedly, last year’s holiday season was a huge success. According to Salesforce, global online sales during Cyber Week 2020 hit a new record with $270 billion, which was 36% higher as compared to the year 2019. The major driver behind this unexpected rise was the change in customers’ shopping behaviour due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the reduced in-store holiday hours, consumers preferred online shopping during the cyber week that pushed digital sales to new heights.

However, various challenges were faced by businesses during the holiday sales 2020, which negatively affected their revenues, brand image, and customer shopping experience.

• Issues with mobile app performance, such as frequent app crashes, server time-outs, delayed response etc.

• Failure to provide a high-performing and secure interface for online shoppers

• Slow app loading due to heavy user load

• Difficulty in maintaining responsiveness of eCommerce websites

• Challenges in ensuring 24/7 uptime for POS applications

• Delay in processing payments

Role of Performance Testing for Holiday Readiness of Apps

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing type that evaluates the performance of apps under various conditions, such as varying bandwidth, increased user load, fluctuating networks, etc. The main aim of this test is to remove performance-related bottlenecks from apps. Therefore, by leveraging this non-functional software testing type, businesses can overcome the above-mentioned challenges and get the effective performance of apps during peak load days such as the festive season and holiday season.

There are various benefits that businesses can reap by leveraging this non-functional software testing type.

Increases responsiveness of apps:

It is always preferred that if the responsiveness of apps is good, it ensures excellent user engagement. To ensure the high responsiveness of apps, performance testing is essential.

Improves loading time:

Slow-loading websites usually annoy the customer, and they lose interest. Performance testing helps to improve the loading time taken by applications or websites.

Provides higher stability:

Apps should not crash when the user load increases to ensure a great use experience (UX). Therefore, load testing should be taken up to improve the stability of the apps.

Stats Depicting the Criticality of Performance Testing for Holiday Season

• According to a Deloitte Digital report titled, ‘Milliseconds make Millions’, a 0.1s improvement in site speed results in an 8.4% increase in conversions for retail consumers, a 9.2% increase in the average order value, and a 5.2% increase in retail customer engagement.

• According to an article titled, ‘Shopping for speed on eBay.com’, for every 100 milliseconds improvement in search page loading time, eBay saw a 0.5% increase in the “Add to Cart” count.

• According to news published by com<, Costco's website went down for more than 16 hours during Thanksgiving Day, costing the retailer nearly $11 million in lost pre-Black Friday potential sales.

• Another evidence of a website crash is PetSmart, which sells pet products, services, and small pets in the US. PetSmart faced an issue with its website during Black Friday 2020. The company tweeted the issue on Twitter and apologized to customers for the inconvenience.

Undoubtedly, performance testing has significantly helped businesses across the world improve the performance of their apps/websites. However, certain areas must be tested thoroughly to ensure seamless, performance of apps/websites.

Major App Functionalities that need Effective Performance Testing

Critical user paths:

An eCommerce app has various critical user paths, such as registration, login, product page, shopping cart, checkout, etc., that must be tested to identify and remove performance bottlenecks.

Payment gateway:

Delays in processing payments or failed payments hamper the CX. It is essential to test the payment gateway to ensure successful payment transactions during peak load days.

Back-end integrations:

For an eCommerce app to work properly, its front-end and back-end systems must work in harmony. Back-end integration such as CRM and logistics must be load tested to ensure proper functioning on peak user-load days.

Communication mediums:

Email, SMS, and other communication mediums play an important role in keeping the customer engaged and updated. Thus, it is essential to load test these mediums for their seamless performance under increased user-loads.

Performance Testing Types Businesses must Leverage for Holiday Readiness of Apps

Load testing:

This testing method is performed to check how the system performs under normal (usually around 70% of peak load) and peak user load conditions.

Stress testing:

This testing method helps identify the system’s breaking point when subjected to a user load beyond the expected peak load. The breaking point can be defined as a load at which either the response time degrades beyond 10% or transactions start falling by more than 5%.

Endurance testing:

This testing method checks the stability and responsiveness of the system when it is under significant load (around 70% of peak load) for a longer period (usually 8 hours to 72 hours).

Spike testing:

It is a subset of stress testing and checks the behaviour of the system by suddenly varying the number of users. It checks if the system can handle the increased user load or not.

Volume testing:

In this testing type, multiple data-intensive transactions are performed to validate how the system performs under such data volumes.

Scalability testing:

This test is performed to measure the capability of software to scale up or scale out when additional resources are added to it.

8 Key Performance Testing Metrics for Business Apps

App installation time:

This gives the first impression of an app to the user. Thus, it is essential to have a faster installation time for the app to make a great impression.

App launch time:

App launch time or app start time is another important metric that must be checked in an application. Ideally, it should not take more than 1 to 2 seconds for the first screen to appear.

App background processing:

It is essential to ensure that in-app performance remains unaffected when multiple apps run in parallel. When the app runs in the background and is retrieved, no data loss should happen.

Memory usage:

An app should not consume excess memory and must not heat the device, especially when it runs in the background. Thus, it is essential to check an app’s CPU usage and memory during its execution.

Response time:

It is the amount of time taken by an app to respond to a given input. Faster response time ensures less wait time and high performance of the app.

Average load time:

Load time of app/website and page load time are both extremely important for users and businesses. Faster loading time or speed ensures better performance of the app/website.

Bandwidth and network compatibility:

Varying bandwidth and fluctuating networks affect the app loading time. Thus, to ensure effective app performance, it is essential to load test the app with minimal bandwidth and with different network types and connections such as 3G, 4G, and 5G.

User Geography:

An app should ideally work seamlessly across geographies. Thus, it is essential to conduct geo-load testing to ensure effective apps performance across different regions.

Conclusion

This year 2021, the holiday season will be a more significant event. Retailers and eCommerce businesses from all over the world will come together and will try to make the most out of the holiday sales. But, for businesses to reap significant benefits from the upcoming holiday shopping season, effective performance and holiday readiness of apps and business websites are essential. Businesses must leverage performance testing for high-performing, holiday-ready apps from a next-gen QA and independent software testing services provider.

How can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

TestingXperts (Tx) is a leading provider of performance and load testing services for businesses across domains. Tx has experience with all industry-leading performance testing and monitoring tools, along with expertise in end-to-end application performance testing services, including network, database, hardware, etc. With a highly-skilled team of performance testers, Tx helps businesses benchmark their application performance. Tx provides customized test results reports to clients that help them make informed decisions. Tx’s in-house accelerator Tx-Perfkit can be leveraged to achieve faster performance testing outcomes.

The post Significance of Performance Testing in Ensuring Holiday Readiness of Apps first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing-across-industries?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=role-of-performance-testing-for-businesses-across-industries Wed, 21 Jul 2021 15:38:04 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=19219

This week in our weekly blog series we have come up with a blog on ‘Role of Performance Testing for Businesses Across Industries.'
Today, there are millions of apps available on app stores, but in reality, only the high-performing apps attract the customer and survive the competition. High-performing apps uplift the brand’s reputation and increase customer experience. Therefore, to ensure that the apps perform seamlessly under all conditions, businesses must leverage performance testing. Read this blog to know more about performance testing and its need.

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Content 1. What is the importance of application performance for businesses? 2. What is Performance Testing? 3. Benefits for Businesses Leveraging Performance Testing 4. Why is Performance Testing Required? 5. Need for high-performing apps across some major industries 6. Different Performance Testing Types Businesses should leverage 7. Conclusion 8. How can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

What is the importance of application performance for businesses?

With the rapidly changing customer expectations across the business landscape, the need for high-performing apps is growing in the market. Today, every business needs apps that perform seamlessly to attract new customers and retain existing users. Also, today’s customers expect companies to deliver apps that load fast and perform seamlessly even under peak loads to provide a great Customer Experience (CX).

Typically, businesses need apps that perform flawlessly under various conditions such as fluctuating networks, low bandwidths, high user loads, etc. For example, If a mobile application performance does not meet the user expectations, users are likely to abandon that app and switch to the nearest competitor. Invariably, the application or website or the web app performance plays a significant role. Therefore, to ensure that the apps perform seamlessly under all conditions, businesses must deliver a seamless user experience.

What is Performance Testing?

Performance testing is a non-functional software testing method that validates the app’s speed, responsiveness, scalability, and reliability. This load testing method checks if the application performs seamlessly under varying networks, bandwidths, and under varying user loads. Some of the app issues identified with this type of testing are runtime error, optimization issues related to speed, latency, throughput, response times, load balancing, etc.

Why is Performance Testing Required?

Latest research analysts views on the need for high-performing apps

According to Statista, there are almost 3.5 million apps available on the Google Play Store and nearly 2.2 million apps available for iOS as of the second quarter of 2022. The report also states that only the best-performing apps stand out in the market and will attract customers.

Think with Google, a one-stop shop of Google for understanding industry trends, in one of its blogs on ‘Speed is key: Optimize your Mobile Experience,’ states that 29% of smartphone users will immediately switch to another site or app if the app is slow or doesn’t satisfy their needs.

According to a Pinterest Engineering Blog titled ‘Driving User Growth with Performance Improvements,’ it has been stated that Pinterest engineers ran an experiment in which they rebuilt web pages for performance. As a result, it led to a 40 percent decrease in Pinner wait time, a 15 per cent increase in SEO traffic, and a 15 per cent increase in conversion rate to new signups.

The above statistics showcase how critical the performance of mobile & web app or website is for businesses. Let us further understand the significance and the need of application performance across some major industries.

Benefits for Businesses Leveraging Performance Testing

1. Improves response time:

Response time is the total time taken by the software to generate an output against the input received. Typically, this testing method helps to improve the app’s response time by removing performance-related issues from the software.

2. Enhances the load time:

It is known that slow-loading websites annoy customers, and similar is the case with mobile apps having more load time, users either abandon the app or move to the nearest competitor. Typically, this testing method improves the loading time of applications by identifying and removing performance and load-related issues or bugs from the software.

3. Improves scalability:

The scalability of an app refers to its capacity to handle varying user loads seamlessly. This test helps in enhancing the load handling capacity of apps by testing the apps and websites under varying user loads.

4. Eliminates bottlenecks:

Bottlenecks are the barriers that decrease the responsiveness of the entire system. This performance testing method helps to find performance bottlenecks in the software by identifying the areas that cause the problems and helps to fix them by notifying the dev team promptly.

5. Helps in early identification and fixing of defects:

Performance testing allows testers to detect and fix performance-related issues faster and frequently. It enables testers to quickly identify issues and helps in faster resolution of bugs.

6. Speeds up the testing process:

In the earlier software development models like the waterfall model, the testers had to wait for the development process to get over to start the software testing. But in an agile environment, performance testing is integrated along with the development process, which speeds up the overall software testing process. Typically, a shift-left method of testing is followed in parallel to development which ensures faster results.

7. Enhances Customer Experience (CX):

Performance testing ensures delivery of high-quality products to customers in less time. Faster delivery of quality products enhances CX and makes the stakeholders and customers happy.

Need for high-performing apps across some major industries

Enterprises across industries require their websites, web apps & mobile apps to perform seamlessly 24×7, and each of the industry segments, as given below, states the significance for app performance.

Healthcare:

• Healthcare apps bridge the gap between healthcare service providers, doctors, patients, and third-party service providers.

• Healthcare apps help patients book appointments with doctors, get real-time consultation with physicians, view and maintain health records, purchase medicines via telepharmacy apps, telemedicine apps, etc.

• According to Grand View Research, the global mHealth apps market size was valued at USD 40.05 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.7% from 2021 to 2028. The major forces driving the growth of mHealth applications in the healthcare sector are better treatment outcomes and improved patient lifestyles enabled by these apps.

• Invariably, It is essential to ensure that the healthcare apps should perform seamlessly under all network conditions and workloads to deliver a great CX to its users.

Telecom:

• Telecom apps enable the flow of communication and information sharing via various platforms such as telephony, video conferencing, broadcasting, television media, instant messaging, e-mails, etc.

• Various types of telecom apps such as retailer apps, mobile wallets, CRM apps, customer support apps, etc., help businesses and customers to interact, share information, perform transactions, etc., with just a click of the button.

• According to Grand View Research, the global telecom services market size was valued at USD 1,657.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.4% from 2021 to 2028.

• Telecom companies must ensure their apps load fast, perform seamlessly under varying user loads and fluctuating network conditions to deliver a great CX and protect brand image.

eCommerce:

• Today, eCommerce apps continue to dominate the retail and shopping sector as it allows end-users to view and shop products on the go.

• eCommerce apps allow users to perform various tasks such as viewing products, adding products to cart/wish list, removing products from cart/wish list, paying the amount via EMI, Wallet, UPI, COD, etc.

• According to Statista the eCommerce software application market had an estimated value of around 5.1 U.S. dollars in 2018 and is forecasted to grow to approximately 6.3 billion U.S. dollars by 2023 during the forecast period of 2019-2024.

• eCommerce app providers should ensure that their apps perform seamlessly during peak days holiday sales like Cyber Monday, Black Friday, etc. These business-critical apps should perform as expected under all networks and user loads to deliver a great shopping experience to customers.

BFSI/FinTech:

• Banking and finance apps have become a part of human lives, as these apps allow users to perform transactions with a single click.

• Banking apps have made customer’s lives easy as users can now pay bills, transfer money, book tickets, buy policies, etc., on the go.

• According to Mordor Intelligence, the financial services application market was valued at USD 103.99 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 164.01 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 7.89% over the forecast period 2020–2025.

• Banking apps should deliver expected performance under peak hours to eliminate chances of a server crash, app crash, stuck payments, etc. High-performing banking apps help businesses to deliver a seamless online banking experience to customers.

EdTech:

• EdTech apps have gained a lot of importance, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. EdTech apps help teachers, students, and others to connect online.

• EdTech apps help teachers provide virtual education to students and allow students to attend online classes, watch videos, and write exams virtually.

• According to MarketsandMarkets, the global EdTech and smart classroom market size is expected to grow from USD 85.8 billion in 2020 to USD 181.3 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 16.1% during the forecast period of 2020-2025.

• The EdTech apps should perform seamlessly 24/7 under all conditions to ensure great learning and teaching experience for both students and teachers.

Across industries, businesses need scalable, robust, and high-performing apps to deliver a great CX. Hence, businesses should leverage different performance testing types to get seamless apps.

Different Performance Testing Types Businesses should leverage

1. Load testing:

This testing method evaluates the potential of an application to work under varying user loads. It is conducted to remove any performance bottlenecks from the system.

2. Stress testing:

It identifies the breaking point of the software when it is subjected to a user load beyond the expected peak. This testing method verifies the stability & reliability of software applications and measures their robustness and error handling capabilities under extremely heavy load conditions. It also ensures software does not crash under varying conditions.

3. Endurance testing:

It checks the system’s performance when it is under significant load (around 70% of peak load) for a longer period (usually 8 hours to 72 hours). This testing method helps in improving the performance, stability, and reliability of the app.

4. Spike testing:

It is a subset of stress testing and checks the performance of the software by suddenly varying the no. of users. This testing method also checks if the software can handle fluctuating user loads under varying conditions.

5. Volume testing:

In this testing, the data load of the software is increased, and its performance is then checked. It helps in providing the volume of data that can be handled by particular software.

6. Scalability testing:

This test identifies the actual number of users that the system can support with existing hardware capacity.

7. Baseline testing:

Each time the software application is updated, performance testing is performed, and baseline metrics of the software application are recorded. These baseline metrics are compared with the results of previously recorded performance metrics. This testing method helps businesses to ensure that a consistent quality of the software is maintained.

8. Benchmark testing:

This testing method compares performance testing results against performance metrics based on different industry standards. This software testing method helps businesses ensure that the software’s current and future releases meet high-quality standards.

Conclusion

With the growing business competition and intricate application architecture, the need for high-quality and optimally performing apps is rising in the market. Though millions of apps are available, only the high-performing apps attract the customer and survive the competition. It is a known truth that low-performing apps affect the brand’s reputation and customer experience. Therefore, businesses should leverage performance testing to ensure their critical apps are of high quality and perform seamlessly to deliver a great CX.

How can TestingXperts (Tx) help?

TestingXperts (Tx) helps businesses predict application behaviour and benchmark application performance. Tx ensures the application is responsive, reliable, robust, scalable, and also meets all contractual obligations and SLAs for performance. Tx offers performance & load testing services across domains and technologies, including web-based n-tier applications, client-server applications, SOA-based solutions, or COTS solutions.

We have rich experience in all industry-leading performance testing and monitoring tools, along with expertise in end-to-end application performance testing, including network, database, hardware, etc. We publish a detailed performance testing report for the application with response times, break-point, peak load, memory leaks, resource utilization, uptime, etc. Get in touch with our performance testing experts to know more.

The post Role of Performance Testing for Businesses Across Industries first appeared on TestingXperts.

]]> https://www.testingxperts.com/blog/performance-testing?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=major-performance-testing-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-them Wed, 08 Jul 2020 14:32:30 +0000 https://www.testingxperts.com/?p=16224

Software testing plays a major role along with software development in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). This testing process involves the testing of the software developed to ensure it is as per the requirements defined and error free for end users. Software testing can be categorized into two major types as Functional testing and Non-functional … Continue reading "Major Performance Testing Challenges and How to Overcome Them"

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Software testing plays a major role along with software development in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). This testing process involves the testing of the software developed to ensure it is as per the requirements defined and error free for end users. Software testing can be categorized into two major types as Functional testing and Non-functional testing types.

Content 1. What is Performance Testing 2. Why is Performance Testing Essential for Testing Business Websites and Mobile Apps? 2.1 Performance Testing Process in Software Testing 3. What are the Challenges of Performance Testing and How to Overcome Them? 3.1 Selection of wrong performance testing tools 3.2 Lack of proper test strategy & test coverage 3.3 Time and budget constraints 3.4 Lack of knowledge about need for performance tests 3.5 Improper analysis of performance test outcomes 3.6 Difficulty in conducting tests on production environment 4. Conclusion

Some of the common types of functional testing are Unit, Integration, System, Sanity, Smoke, Interface, Regression, Acceptance testing, etc. Some of the most common Non-functional testing types are Reliability, Endurance, Localization, Recovery and Performance testing to name a few.

Out of these testing types, Performance testing is one of the important testing process that plays a critical role by ensuring the software performs stably and seamlessly even under varying load conditions.

What is Performance Testing?

Performance or load testing is an important non-functional type of testing and involves the process by which software or an application is tested to know its current system performance.

This sort of testing checks how your current system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability when tested under varying workload conditions. Significantly, the system is tested under multiple and different load and network conditions and this testing process effectively checks the time taken by the system to respond under these different loads.

Performance testing also ensures that the application performs as expected irrespective of the network fluctuations, bandwidth availability, or the load of traffic. Basically, this testing process determines the speed with which the system works and some of the issues identified with this type of testing are runtime bloat, optimization issues related to speed, latency, throughput, poor response times, load balancing problems, and other bandwidth issues if any.

There are various types of performance testing that are commonly adopted which include Endurance testing, Load testing, Volume testing, Stress testing, Scalability testing, Spike testing, etc. and these testing methods determines the speed, and responsiveness of the website, the app or the network when tested under different workloads.

Why is Performance Testing Essential for Testing Business Websites and Mobile Apps?

Performance testing measures the speed, scalability, reliability, and stability of the software under varying loads thus ensuring their stable performance. Every business application has to be stable and deliver consistent results, irrespective of the number of users accessing it at any point of time. Especially, with respect to banking apps, eCommerce apps, etc. these apps need to perform seamlessly even with numerous users, else it adversely affects the brand reputation.

Today’s users prefer apps that load spontaneously and get enticed with these apps that perform seamlessly and deliver great user experience. If the apps deliver slow response while accessing them, users tend to leave such apps and look out for alternatives.

Evidently, today it is essential for businesses to ensure the performance of their business apps and websites is seamless in order to deliver great customer experience. Performance tests such as load and stress tests determine the behaviour of the application, and help to check whether the server responds to the user with requested data within the stipulated time.

Hence, it is essential for business websites and mobile apps to work effectively even under heavy load of users, as it is important for them to keep going to ensure business continuity. Therefore, Performance testing is critical for business success and should be leveraged by enterprises.

Performance Testing Process in Software Testing

Now, let us try to list different activities of the Performance testing to get an understanding of the actual Performance testing process listed below:

– Analyze the existing environment

– Gather performance characteristics of the current system

– Define usage model and load distribution

– Define the performance acceptance criteria

– Develop the test assets, test plan, test scripts and scenarios

– Configure the load generation environment

– Execute planned tests

– Monitor web servers, application servers and database server’s performance counters

– Correlate and analyze the results

– Generate reports

– Provide performance improvement recommendations

– Retest as needed

Specifically, it is the QA team that is involved in the process of performance testing. The team needs to follow all the steps in order to perform this testing process to deliver effective results.

But, typically, while performing this method of performance testing or load testing, there are certain challenges which should be handled by the teams to ensure the success of the performance testing process.

What are the Challenges of Performance Testing and How to Overcome Them?

1. Selection of wrong performance testing tools:

This is a common challenge and in many situations the most appropriate performance testing tool is not selected. This tool selection depends on a number of factors such as application communication protocol, application technology stack, skill-level of the performance tester and the licencing cost of the tool.

If a wrong tool is chosen, then it might lead to loss of testing days for getting the test scripts to work and it is necessary that the chosen performance tool should recognize the controls of the application under test.

Solution:

It is necessary for the QA manager and the QA team to properly evaluate the application under test (AUT) along with licencing cost involved, and then choose the best performance testing tool to ensure success of the testing process.

2. Lack of proper test strategy & test coverage:

There is a lot of effort involved in designing a comprehensive testing strategy which takes care of identifying and prioritizing project risks and deciding on what actions to be taken to mitigate them.

This testing process involves identifying application performance characteristics, planning appropriate tests to exercise those characteristics, simulating real user interactions, testing of API services and testing whether all these services are working or not as part of the test strategy. Due to the lack of proper brainstorming while creation of test strategy and test coverage, it becomes difficult to get effective performance test results.

Solution:

The performance team should spend significant effort on analysing and understanding application architecture and other performance characteristics like load distribution, usage model, geography of usage, availability requirements, resilience requirements, reliability requirements, technology stack etc.

A proper and clear testing strategy should be developed to ensure validation of these performance characteristics to get effective performance test results.

3. Time and budget constraints:

Load testing essentially takes some time and budget to get effective results. Due to the lack of proper planning during software development, allocation of resources or budget is not done. This leads to dependence on low-skilled resources, who do not understand full scope of performance testing activities.

It also might lead to usage of open source tools which might lead to increased project risk. All these factors impact the quality of overall performance testing process.

Solution:

Therefore, at the beginning of projects, it is essential for businesses to plan for proper performance testing activities accounting for required timeframe, resources and proper budget allocations.

4. Lack of knowledge about need for performance tests:

Most stakeholders and budget makers do not recognize the value of performance testing during software development. In most instances, post production release of software, many performance issues may crop up which might result in crashing of the website, app or software.

Solution:

Evidently, it is essential for the stakeholders, product owners or test architect to plan for performance testing as part of end-to-end testing strategy. These applications should be performance tested exercising web servers, databases and third party apps to ensure effective performance.

5. Improper analysis of performance test outcomes:

This is indeed a significant challenge faced by many testers as a good amount of system and application knowledge is essential to deeply analyze the performance test results.

Solution:

An experienced performance tester should perform the testing process who will be able to judge the scenarios and could continuously refine the tests and keep adding tests to make them consistent. The performance tester should be well aware of application architecture.

Also, the performance tester should have experience across OS concepts, web architecture, OSI model, networking concepts, data structures, client-side performance concepts and server-side performance concepts. These performance experts will be able to quickly analyze the test results.

6. Difficulty in conducting tests on production environment:

Conducting load tests on a fully functioning production environment is a challenge. Especially while testing in such situations, real-time users are using the product and any change to the production environment might affect the user experience.

Solution:

It is essential to closely monitor the trends in the production environment in order to spot out irregularities. The performance testing activities should ideally be planned in production like environment instead of actual production environment.

If business needs demand execution in actual production environment, such activities should be executed only during off business hours with sufficient time in hand for any corrective actions in case application crashes under load in production.

Earlier, load testing was mostly taken up to simulate basic user actions at a protocol level. But, today with more complex applications in place with intricate user actions, load testers might need to balance between automation and exploratory testing to handle these new technology complex applications.

Conclusion:

Performance testing is a non-functional type of testing that is performed to ascertain how the system performs under varying load conditions. The speed, scalability, reliability and resource usage of the software or the application is evaluated with this type of testing. It is essential for business websites especially eCommerce sites and mobile apps to get performance tested to ensure they scale up when numerous users access simultaneously.

There are many types of performance testing methods that can be adopted to test the software. But, typically while performing this testing method, the QA teams tend to encounter certain challenges. Specifically, the QA teams need to follow certain measures to overcome these above listed challenges to deliver stable and quality software.

Last but not the least, it is essential for businesses to leverage performance testing services provider to be assured of scalable, stable and high-performing software.

Talk to our experts today to discuss your unique QA challenges and see how we bring value to your business

Recommended Reading Blogs

1. Read Complete Performance Testing Guide 2. Performance Testing Tools 2020 3. How important is Performance Engineering for Better Business Outputs 4. How to improve your Application Performance on Black Friday 5. How to Avoid Black Friday Pitfalls 6. 6 Best Practices to ensure that your application is ready for Black Friday

 

Related Queries on Performance Testing

Q1. What is Performance Testing

Ans. Performance or load testing is an important non-functional type of testing and involves the process by which software or an application is tested to know its current system performance.

Q2. What are the types of performance testing?

Ans. There are various types of Application and software performance testing. Click here to read more.

Q3. What are the tools of performance testing?

Ans. There are certain performance testing tools that can be used to deliver effective performance to e-commerce, mobile apps, and other systems. Read full list of tools here.

The post Major Performance Testing Challenges and How to Overcome Them first appeared on TestingXperts.

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