Top 4 Questions About Performance Testing

Like the name implies, performance testing provides a glimpse at how your system, network, or application performs under a certain workload or on a specific device. Quality performance testing helps ensure that your product is ready for real-world use by your customers, and that they will have a positive experience with it. The numbers your performance testing generates also serve as a baseline for improvement with each release.

Are you restructuring your approach to performance testing, or pursuing it for the first time? Here are four frequently asked questions, along with answers, to bring you up to speed:

1. How are performance testing and automated testing related?
   Performance testing helps determine performance in terms of responsiveness, effectiveness, speed and stability under a specified workload. As in most cases where automation is implemented, it makes performance testing faster and less prone to errors. Though there are many ways to help automate your performance testing, graphical user interface (GUI) and application programming interface (API) testing are widely used. See the four key advantages of API testing.
2. What are several examples of performance testing?
   • Load testing
   • Stress testing
   • Soak testing
   • Spike testing
   • Configuration testing
   • Isolation testing
3. What is the difference between baseline and benchmark numbers in performance testing?
   The line between these numbers is thin and by no means static. In a broad sense, baseline numbers are achieved by testing your "raw" application prior to performance tuning. These are used as a reference point during later stages of performance testing, following tuning -- hence the name. Benchmark numbers are considered a standard across the domain. When "benchmarking", your testing results are compared to these numbers.
4. What are the best open-source tools for performance testing?
   Listed below are several of the most commonly used open-source tools for performance testing. The tool that your team selects depends on the specific needs of your application during use, so remember to perform a full evaluation before choosing your performance testing tool. Learn more about evaluating the needs of your product here.
   • JMeter
   • Tsung
   • The Grinder
   • Gatling

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