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2019

  • in JMeter
  • 10 min read

Performance Test Strategy

A long time ago, Quality Assurance was executed after development. Performance testing was an activity executed when software was ready for production.

If a performance issue was found, most companies:

  • Fix the issue which means a complete new cycle including QA Tests and performance tests are required,
  • Or put the software live and decided to fix it as part of ongoing development,
  • Or borrow from the future. That's technical debt.

Let’s be fair: this approach isn't optimal.

The root cause is performance testing is not considered viable until the software reached a certain level of maturity.

The DevOps approach is exactly the opposite: performance test early.

It is known as shift left performance testing and it works it just needs Quality Assurance teams to think a little differently when it comes to performance testing and to have a performance test strategy in place to support shift left performance testing.

Let’s explore how to integrate load testing as part of your software development strategy.

OctoPerf 10.4.0 - Better Insights on Errors

We've received a lot of feedback around the way we report errors during the tests. First we only stored the first 100 errors per load generator to avoid having too many. And because of this, many of you were not able to analyse issue happening after a while. This can be frustrating if you want to understand what's going on at that stage. That's the reason behind the two main features of this release:

Improvements

Area chart

It does not only work for errors but it's probably going to be the main use case. This new addition to the report items family will show the percentage/count of the various HTTP/S codes over time:

Area chart

How we tripled our conversion rate?

OctoPerf is a SaaS load testing solution.

A load test simulates a number of predefined virtual users, to validate the application for an expected load of concurrent users. Applications tested range from company intranets to e-commerce websites. This type of test makes it possible to highlight the sensitive and critical points of a technical architecture. It also allows measuring the impact on the servers, the bandwidth required on the network, etc.

Graphical Debt

A load test campaign is usually divided in three steps:

  1. Designing the behavior of the simulated virtual users on the application under test,
  2. Configuring the runtime scenario properties (number of concurrent visitors, locations, browser and network used, etc.),
  3. Analysing the test results to pinpoint potential performance bottlenecks.

When we released the first version of OctoPerf back in 2015 it had far less features than it has today. The GUI was pretty simple and displayed these three steps in a single page, making it obvious for load testers that they had to go from design to runtime to analysis.

First version of OctoPerf's GUI

  • in JMeter
  • 10 min read

Soak Test – A Practical Example

As performance testers Soak Testing is a test that is often overlooked.

We always think of Peak Volume tests and we always like to push the system to its limits in the form of a Scalability Test but often the Soak Test is forgotten about.

It’s a great test and it tells you many critical aspects about your application under load, things that no other test can and is critical in determining if you application is fit for production.

What is it?

It’s a test that run for a long period of time, what is a long period of time .. well it depends upon your application, organisation, production requirements, appetite for testing….

OctoPerf 10 is out

It has been a few months since the last update post and as you will see we have been quite busy. Let's not waste any time and look first into the most obvious change of them all.

Some of you may have already noticed that we updated our logo last week. A simpler text logo like we had before did not feel fitting anymore. The new Octo-rocket logo will take our favorite octopus higher than never before. To make good on this promise we have also released a lot of new features!