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Slides from ISQT’ Step Auto Conference on Security and Performance Testing, 18th September 2008

TnT Admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:37:44 +0000

Some of the power points that are available in ISQT’ Step Auto Conference on Security and Performance Testing held on 18th September 2008 can be founder in the below link. Below are the slides available:

(Source:Slides from ISQT’ Step Auto Conference on Security and Performance Testing, 18th September 2008)

“Innovative Practices for Effective Performance Testing” by S. Arunmozhiverman, Asst. Vice President, Performance Engineering Practice, Polaris
“Reducing Application Vulnerabilities by Security Engineering” by Subash Newton, Manager – Projects (Non Functional Testing), Cognizant
“Digital WaterMarking for Information Security in Software Testing” by Shubhra Banerji,Test Manager, Infosys Technology
“Insight into Performance Testing J2EE Applications”,by Chandrasekar Thodla, Senior Associate, Cognizant
“System Performance Engineering: Evaluation of a Destop Security Application” by Ridhi Sakesna, QA Engineer, Vittalkumar Mirajkar, Sr. QA Engineer, Ambareen Ahmed, Mcafee
“Enterprise Performance Testing” by Karuna Karnati, SME on Performance Testing, Ajay Kumar, Senior Programmer, Accenture.

(Special thanks to Aravind Kumar for contribution, CSS Corp)

Loadtester Incorporated Library & Articles

TnT Admin — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:53:54 +0000

Loadtester Incorporated have a wide collection of articles, whitepapers, PowerPoint’s, Word Documents and PDF files all dealing with load testing, stress testing, and capacity planning. You need not be unexperienced LoadRunner or Performance Tester to fully appreciate the articles. Some of the resources that I find particularly useful are articles that cover counters for MS SQL 2000, Citrix, RDP Protocol Basics, WinSock Protocol and VTS. There are two links of resources to be precise, one to the articles written by the company. The other to the library. Click the below link to access the resources.

(Special thanks to Aravind Kumar for contribution, CSS Corp)

Script Development Checklist

TnT Admin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:55:05 +0000

If you are pretty new to scripting with LoadRunner VUGen, chances that you will miss one or two important steps, that may be missing out of the think time settings, number of iterations, insufficient parameters, location of load generators, areas to encompass a transaction, etc… Therefore, it will be a good idea to have a checklist to keep track of the things done for each script. Aravind Kumar have one of this tools with him to make his work easier and below is a copy that you can utilize for your next script development. Click on link to download:

Script Development Checklist

(Special thanks to Aravind Kumar for contribution, CSS Corp)

System Performance Testing A Case Study, Part 1: Developing the Test Strategy (ver 5.5 Feb 2005)

TnT Admin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:56:05 +0000

This case study, written by Ross Collard of Collard & Company describes a situation in which a performance test is needed. The assignment is to identify and analyze the business and technical issues and develop a test strategy for the situation. This strategy describes how testing is used to predict the system’s actual performance, in order to assess whether it will be acceptable in live operation.
Through the case study and series of exercises, you will learn:

Planning and preparing for effective performance testing
How to develop a performance test strategy in a typical mixed-technology, mixed-vendor environment with multiple interdependent application systems.
How to set performance goals and testing objectives.
How to perform a risk assessment and use it to focus and prioritize the test efforts.
How to design the test lab, and allow for the differences between the lab and the real-world infrastructure which will be utilized in live operation.
How to design realistic test work loads.
Executing performance tests and evaluating results.
How to use automated load testing tools effectively, and minimize opportunities for tool mis-utilization.
How to decide what to measure and what data to collect.
How to organize and run a performance test.
How to interpret the harvest of performance data and form meaningful, trustworthy conclusions about performance in live operation.
Why and how system performance testing is fundamentally different from performance engineering, system optimization and feature testing.

Click here to download.

(Source: “System Performance Testing, A Case Study, Part 1: Developing the Test Strategy”, Ross Collard, Collard & Company)

Recommended Books

TnT Admin — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:43:44 +0000

A list of recommended books that touches on protocol communications and performance monitoring and tuning. Great for testers and performance engineer seeking for additional knowledge to perform their work.

	HTTP The Definitive Guide: This book explains about the HTTP protocol in depth. This is extremely useful when you are dealing with alot of Web (HTTP/HTML) protocols. An understanding of HTTP protocol will allow you to better manage and manipulate the scripts and identify problems in the Replay Log.
	Windows 2000 Performance Guide: This book explains the Windows performance counters in details and how they are being derived. It also covers topics related to how the server work which will provide you with a in-depth understanding of the various monitoring counters representation before you determine which one to use as standard list during load testing.
	Java Performance Tuning: A great book that covers the performance issues in depth with J2EE applications from coding, garbage collection to various components in an J2EE application (e.g. EJB, JDBC). Also featured in it’s parent site, Java Performance Tuning with newly updated content on performance tuning Java.
	Performance Analysis for Java Web Sites: Another great book that covers diagnosing performance problems in Java web sites. Unlike Java Performance Tuning which goes into deep on every Java component, this book provides an overview of servers as well as an easy to understand perspective when dealing with Java web sites. A good book to start with!

High Performance Web Sites. This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.
The rules explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you’ve already built into your site — adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.

(Source: Amazon)

OCP: Oracle9i Performance Tuning Study Guide. This book is extremely useful where it discusses the internals of the Oracle memory architecture and components and how they operate. Keeping the content simple, it touches on the tools to monitor each component in Oracle architecture and things to watch out for. Through this, recommendations in tuning were also provided. This book is highly recommended for professionals new to Oracle and involved in a load test with Oracle databases.

Network Troubleshooting Tools. Over the years, thousands of tools have been developed for debugging TCP/IP networks. They range from very specialized tools that do one particular task, to generalized suites that do just about everything except replace bad Ethernet cables. Even better, many of them are absolutely free. There’s only one problem: who has time to track them all down, sort through them for the best ones for a particular purpose, or figure out how to use them?

“Network Troubleshooting Tools” does the work for you–by describing the best of the freely available tools for debugging and troubleshooting. You can start with a lesser-known version of “ping” that diagnoses connectivity problems, or take on a much more comprehensive program like MRTG for graphing traffic through network interfaces. There’s “tkined” for mapping and automatically monitoring networks, and Ethereal for capturing packets and debugging low-level problems.

This book isn’t just about the tools available for troubleshooting common network problems. It also outlines a systematic approach to network troubleshooting: how to document your network so you know how it behaves under normal conditions, and how to think about problems when they arise, so you can solve them more effectively.

(Source: Amazon)

A poorly performing database application not only costs users time, but also has an impact on other applications running on the same computer or the same network. “SQL Tuning” provides an essential next step for SQL developers and database administrators who want to extend their SQL tuning expertise and get the most from their database applications.

Author Dan Tow outlines a timesaving method he’s developed for finding the optimum execution plan–rapidly and systematically–regardless of the complexity of the SQL or the database platform being used. You’ll learn how to understand and control SQL execution plans and how to diagram SQL queries to deduce the best execution plan for a query. Key chapters in the book include exercises to reinforce the concepts you’ve learned. “SQL Tuning” concludes by addressing special concerns and unique solutions to “unsolvable problems.”

Whether you are a programmer who develops SQL-based applications or a database administrator or other who troubleshoots poorly tuned applications, “SQL Tuning” will arm you with a reliable and deterministic method for tuning your SQL queries to gain optimal performance.

(Source: Amazon)