Most businesses are dependant on how good the applications driving their business perform. Some of those can be web applications, some mobile, some even deployable/installable software. Performance is not just how many users can the application handle and still maintain performance. It also has a lot to do about how easy it is for users to perform most common scenarios, how reliable application is and also how many errors users observe.
We have large base of experience in load testing whereas we find following things relevant:
- Adopting to specific needs of application by coding custom components like: authorization, calls for mobile views, specific API calls and others
- Deploying sufficient monitoring of application to allow load testing to be not just about the breaking point, but also identify where and what components would need to be updated to improve performance
- Desigining and Running “most likely” usage scenarios to find what application really would do - there is no point just battering single call in application to see when it breaks, it is more about simulating how it would behavee if many users would use different parts of it simultaneously, how it would grow, etc.
Tools
We use both commercial tools like BlazeMeter as well as our own in-house developed application load testing platform for more complex tasks or tasks which have to be performed from within internal or limited access networks.