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Performance testing is a process of testing applications for non-functional requirements, which determines the application's speed, stability, responsiveness, and scalability under the stipulated workload. A system’s performance is one of the leading indicators to determine its performance in the market. Learn fundamentals of testing through our performance testing training and certification.
Ans- Performance testing intends to determine the responsiveness, reliability, throughput, interoperability, and scalability of a system and application under a given workload. It could also determine the speed or effectiveness of a computer, network, software application, or device. Testing can be conducted on software applications, system resources, targeted application components, databases, etc. It usually involves an automated test suite, as this allows for easy, repeatable simulations of various standard, peak, and exceptional load conditions.
Such forms of testing help verify whether a system or application meets the specifications claimed by its vendor. The process can compare applications regarding speed, data transfer rate, throughput, bandwidth, efficiency, or reliability. Performance testing can also aid as a diagnostic tool in determining bottlenecks and single points of failure. It is often conducted in a controlled environment and in conjunction with stress testing, a process of determining the ability of a system or application to maintain a certain level of effectiveness under unfavorable conditions.
Ans- At a very high level, performance testing is always conducted to address one or more risks related to expense, opportunity costs, continuity, or corporate reputation. Conducting such tests helps give insights into software application release readiness, adequacy of network and system resources, infrastructure stability, and application scalability, just to name a few. Gathering estimated performance characteristics of application and system resources before the launch helps to address issues early and provide valuable feedback to stakeholders, helping them make crucial and strategic decisions. Learn more about why performance testing is important.
Ans- Performance testing covers a whole lot of ground, including areas such as:
Most of these areas are intertwined with each other, each aspect contributing to attain the overall objectives of stakeholders.
Ans- Understand the core activities in conducting performance tests:
Ans- A strong relationship exists between performance testing and tuning; one often leads to the other. Often, end-to-end testing unveils system or application bottlenecks that are regarded as incompatible with project target goals. Once those bottlenecks are discovered, the next step for most teams is a series of tuning efforts to make the application perform adequately.
Such efforts normally include but are not limited to:
Tuning efforts may also commence if the application has reached acceptable performance. Still, the team wants to reduce the system resources used, decrease the volume of hardware needed, or further increase system performance.
Ans- Baseline is a process of capturing performance metric data for the sole purpose of evaluating the efficacy of successive changes to the system or application. It is important that all characteristics and configurations except those specifically being varied for comparison remains the same to make effective comparisons as to which change (or series of changes) is the driving result toward the targeted goal. Armed with such baseline results, subsequent changes can be made to the system configuration or application and testing results compared to see whether such changes were relevant or not.
Some considerations when generating baselines include:
Ans- Load testing is the process of putting demand on a system and measuring its response, determining how much volume the system can handle. Stress testing is subjecting the system to unusually high loads far beyond its regular usage pattern to determine its responsiveness. These are different from performance testing, whose sole purpose is to determine the response and effectiveness of a system; that is, how fast the system is. Since load ultimately affects a system's response, performance testing is almost always done with stress testing. Want to know more about load testing? Check out the resources available online on load testing tutorials.
Ans- Test Plan is the root element of the JMeter scripts and houses the other components, such as Threads, Config Elements, Timers, Pre-Processors, Post-Processors, Assertions, and Listeners. It also offers a few configurations of its own.
It allows you to define user variables (name-value pairs) that can be used later in your scripts. It also allows us to configure how the Thread Groups it contains should run; that is, should Thread Groups run one at a time? Several Thread Groups are often contained within a test plan as test plans evolve. This option allows you to determine how they run. By default, all Thread Groups are set to run concurrently. A helpful option when getting started is Functional Test Mode. When checked, all server responses returned from each sample are captured. This can prove helpful for small simulation runs, ensuring JMeter is configured correctly, and the server returns the expected results.
Ans- Thread Groups, as we have seen, are the entry points for any test plan. They
represent the number of threads/users JMeter will use to execute the test plan. All controllers and samplers for a test must reside under a Thread Group. Other elements, such as listeners, may be placed directly under a test plan in cases where you want them to apply to all Thread Groups or under a single Thread Group if they only pertain to that group. Thread Group configurations provide options to specify the number of threads that will be used for the test plan, how long it will take for all threads to become active (ramp up), and the number of times to execute the test.
Each thread will execute the test plan entirely independently of the other threads. The ramp-up must be long enough to avoid a workload that is too large at the start of a test, as this can often lead to network saturation and invalidate test results.
If the intention is to have X number of users active in the system, it is better to ramp up slowly and increase the number of iterations. A final option the configuration provides is the scheduler. This allows setting the start and end time of a test execution. For example, you can kick off a test for precisely 1 hour during off-peak hours.
Ans- Controllers drive the processing of a test and come in two flavors: sampler controllers and logical controllers.
Sampler controllers send requests to a server. These include HTTP, FTP, JDBC, LDAP, and so on. Logical controllers, however, allow the customization of the logic used to send the requests. For example, a loop controller can repeat an operation several times; the if controller is for selectively executing a request, and the if controller is for continuing to execute a request until some condition becomes false.
Ans- Samplers are components that help send requests to the server and wait for a response. Requests are processed in the order they appear in the tree. Check out the following samplers:
Each has properties that can be tweaked further to suit your needs. The default configurations are usually exemplary and can be used as is. Consider adding assertions to samplers to perform basic validation on server responses. During testing, the server may often return a status code of 200, indicative of a successful request, but fail to display the page correctly. At such times, assertions can help ensure the request was indeed successful.
Ans- Logic controllers help customize the logic to decide how requests are sent to a server. They can modify requests, repeat requests, interleave requests, control the duration of requests' execution, switch requests, measure the overall time taken to perform requests, and so on.
Ans- Listeners are components that gather the results of a test run, allowing it to be further analyzed. In addition, listeners can direct the data to a file for later use. Furthermore, they allow us to choose which fields to save and whether to use the CSV or XML format. All listeners save the same data, the only difference being how the data is presented on the screen. Listeners can be added anywhere in the test, including directly under the test plan. They will collect data only from the elements at or below their level.
Some listeners, such as Assert Results, Comparison Assertion Visualizer, Distribution Graph, Graph Results, Spline Visualizer, and View Results, in the tree are memory- and CPU-intensive and should not be used during actual test runs. They are okay to use for debugging and functional testing.
Ans- By default, threads send requests without pausing between each request. You should specify a delay by adding one of the available timers to the Thread Group(s). This also helps make your test plans more realistic, as users couldn't send requests at that speed. The timer causes a certain amount of time before each sampler in its scope.
Ans- Assertions are components that allow you to verify responses received from the server. In essence, they allow you to verify that the application is functioning correctly and that the server is returning the expected results. Assertions can be run on XML, JSON, HTTP, and other responses returned from the server. Assertions can also be resource-intensive, so don't have them on for test runs.
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Ans- As the name implies, a pre-processor element executes some actions before making a request. Pre-processor elements are often used to modify the settings of a request just before it runs or to update variables that aren't extracted from the response text. Post-processor elements execute some actions after a request has been made. They are often used to process response data and extract values from it.
With the growing complexity of software applications, the demand for performance testers is likely to remain strong. Secure your place in the growing market with Performance Testing Training & Certification, which gives you an in-depth insight into software behavior during workload. You will learn how to check the software's latency and response time. You can also check whether the software application is efficient for scaling. The course gives you the strength to analyze the overall performance of an application under different types of loads.
In this blog on Performance Testing interview questions and answers, we have compiled a few of the most often-asked questions in job interviews for performance testing-based profiles. Going through these questions helps you to secure your dream job.
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