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Load / Performance Articles & Links
First Paragraph: Long ensconced in backroom IT offices as the Rodney Dangerfield of the application development process, software testing--specifically of the automated type--is gaining newfound respect. Fueled by widespread business expeditions into the Internet economy, testing has surfaced not only as a critical IT issues, but also as an even more critical business issue. Comments: This paper discusses the need for load/performance testing, the tool options and services which begin to evolve into the ASP model. Author: Billie Shea Publisher: InformationWeek Issue/Date: July 3, 2000 Using Web Server Logs to Direct Web Site Testing First Paragraph: How often have you wished you knew how your customers really use your Web site? That information actually exists - it is just lying untapped in your Web server's logs. Those records reveal the reality of how your site is used, and can provide a great deal of data if you know how to mine it. Your quality assurance team can use this information to organize browser testing based on user statistics, improve testing coverage of your Web site, and plan more realistic load testing. Comments: How can you best utilize the information that's hidden in your server logs? The author tells you how, why, and when to check the statistics. Author: Karen Johnson Publisher: LogiGear Corporation Issue/Date: April, 2007 Performance Testing E-Commerce Web Systems First Paragraph: Yesterday, your marketing department started an ad campaign that told everyone to come to your Web site. Today, your Web server is down due to everyone doing what they were told. Tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal has an article on the front page saying how your site was down all day. Do not let this happen to your Web site. Comments: A complete and practical guide to setting up performance testing, including setting up hardware configurations and selecting the tools. Author: Mike Hagen Publisher: stickyminds.com Issue/Date: May, 2000 Web-Site Monitoring Derails Problems First Paragraph: There's no arguing that performance matters for those doing business online. Web-site performance is among the top challenges facing online companies. Bill Gassman, a senior analyst at Gartner Group, calls Web-site performance management "a multifaceted challenge" and says that "delivering the proper performance for E-business Web applications requires a continuous collaborative effort to properly define and fund business requirements, to apply the proper application architecture and resources, and then to monitor both user perception and infrastructure statistics through performance metrics." Comments: An interesting article that discusses Web-site monitoring (beyond performance testing) and how it should be done to continue to maintain quality of services. Author: Billie Shea Publisher: InformationWeek Issue/Date: September 25, 2000 Is Your Web Site Scalable Enough? First Paragraph: In a perfect world, thousands of users, sitting at their computers, would be at your beck and call, ready to slam your Web application with their mouse clicks and keyboard entries, testing its ability to scale. In the frantic world of dot-com development, however, there are no such users - and if your Web application can't scale to handle hundreds, thousands, or even millions of real customers, you stand to lose not only revenue, but reputation. In the online realm, Web-application response is synonymous with customer service. Comments: The article examines three products that make it easy to stress-test your Web applications and keep your site up and running. Author: Jason Levitt Publisher: InformationWeek Issue/Date: January 17, 2000 Business Drives Web Scalability First Paragraph: Traditional companies moving toward the Web and 100% online businesses all strive for more scalable sites. Both want to offer visitors around-the-clock service. This goal isn't entirely unattainable, but reaching it will be a major challenge. Many different parameters must be taken into consideration. Comments: This article discusses the importance of planning and early testing to deliver Web sites that give users stable response times and integrity in transaction handling. It also offers a survey report which addresses the following questions: "What are the most common points of failures in your company's Internet Infrastructure?" and "What has been the most effective solution to Web-site performance problems?" Author: Jean-Christophe Cimetiere Publisher: InformationWeek Issue/Date: September 25, 2000 Load Testing Web Applications using Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tool First Paragraph: Microsoft's Web Application Stress Tool provides an easy way to simulate large numbers of users against your Web application. This tool makes it possible to make intelligent decisions about hardware and software load incurred by your application and how much traffic a given machine or group of machines can handle. In this article Rick shows how the tool works and how to properly interpret the performance data it generates. Comments: In this article, the author walks you through an example of how he uses Microsoft WAS tool, a free tool that can be downloaded at http://webtool.rte.microsoft.com/, to stress test his Web site. The article is informative, especially for those who are considering using WAS specifically, or any free tool available today for stress testing Web site. The discussion is also a useful introduction to Web stress testing for those who are new to this type of test. Author: Rick Strahl Publisher: West Wind Technologies Issue/Date: February 24, 2000 Load balancing for high availability First Paragraph: To protect against a complete site outage, Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) can transparently direct customers to other Web sites. Further, GSLB helps provide customers with faster Web response times by directing them to the nearest site. Typically, GSLB works within the framework of Domain Name System (DNS) to direct customers to the best site. When a customer requests a page such as www.nwfusion.com, for example, the browser must first find the IP address for Network World's Web site. The browser goes to a local DNS server (provided by the ISP or network administrator), which finds the authoritative DNS server for Network World's Web site. A DNS server is considered authoritative for a particular zone if it is designated by that domain's network administrator. Comments: High-availability server load balancing helps Web sites tolerate failures. Author: Chandra Kopparapu Publisher: Network World Issue/Date: July 30, 2000 Stress Testing Data Access Components in Windows DNA Applications First Paragraph: An often overlooked step in the development and deployment of a Microsoft® Windows® DNA application is stress testing the application to ensure that it will perform as expected when accessed by the maximum number of authorized users in the production environment. This article emphasizes the importance of stress testing as it relates to developing applications utilizing Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) and offers a few tips that will make the process easier to complete. Comments: This article describes a process for load testing web-based applications that are built on the Windows DNA platform. The article discusses issues related to application design, development and hardware/software configuration and how they can affect performance. In particular, the article focuses on performance monitoring of IIS and SQL Server, and describes the sorts of problems that can be diagnosed based on the results gathered by the performance monitors. Author: Mike Schelstrate Publisher: MSDN Issue/Date:March 2000 How Healthy Is Your Site? First Paragraph: Imagine a store with automatic doors that won't open, aisles so jammed you can't see the shelves, cash registers that don't work and clerks that direct you to the wrong location. That business wouldn't survive long on Main Street. Like their brick-and-mortar counterparts, online merchants and suppliers are discovering that they can't sustain virtual businesses fraught with major outages, slow performance, content errors and broken transactions. The ad dollars spent on e-commerce may have gone up 1,400 percent last year, but poor performance is a big reason visitor-to-customer conversion rates remain flat. What's needed is operational discipline... Comments: A discussion on Web site monitoring. Author: Christine Hudgins Publisher: Network Computing Issue/Date:April 17, 2000
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