Posted by Albert Gareev on Nov 29, 2016
Another day, another good question on Quora. For years, I’ve been answering “what is performance testing?” in a variety of ways. In a technical way, I tell about process, tools, scripts, measurements, and analysis. More often though, I need to convey the concept to a non-technical or at least not very technical person. Finding a […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Apr 20, 2016
This article was published on StickyMinds – “Hidden Parts of the Performance Equation”, April, 2016. The Performance Equation Many teams decide to put together a “test bed” of servers and network infrastructure, develop some scripts simulating user requests, run the whole thing against the application, and see if they can satisfy the business requirements. And […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 09, 2014
To perform testing, GUI automation scripts need to encapsulate the following components: Test data, used for input and verification. Service functionalities, like reporting, data retrieval, etc. GUI mapping – set of logical names of GUI controls mapped to their physical properties. GUI operation, i.e. recognition of controls, sending commands, retrieving property values. Test instructions (test […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 05, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad In a few of my recent posts I mentioned importance of avoiding unrealistic stress in test sessions. – And I also mentioned that there are situations when we indeed want to explore behavior of the application being under stressing load. But first of all, let’s agree on some definitions. […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 22, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad Providing irrelevant or misleading test results is worse than not providing test results at all. When using automation, testers must be twice as careful about relevance of tests – or maybe ten more times, hundred times – depending on how much judgment is passed on to mindless side. Load […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 15, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad Load scripts are typically linear: they’re intended to generate a load, not to cover sophisticated logical scenarios checked by functional automation and explored by skilled testers. For this reason, load scripts rarely contain complex code branches and loops. Yet there are functional scenarios that are part of the load, […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jul 14, 2012
“Follow the CRUMBS to evaluate Test Automation” is second (and final in series) article I published in close collaboration with Michael Larsen. With the first one we set focus on questions to raise while preparing for automation project – and in the second we discussed main heuristic evaluation criteria: Confirmation, Coverage Criteria, and Complexity Risk, Robustness, and Reliability […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 22, 2012
“Coming to TERMS with Test Automation” is an article I published in collaboration with Michael Larsen. We discussed main questions to consider when you’re about to start a [test] automation activity: Tool / Technology Execution Requirements and Risks Maintenance (and maintainability) Security Download the magazine (PDF) from Software Test Professionals web-site: ST&QA Magazine 2011/2012 Dec/Jan […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 23, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad The way you execute requests to the server will have a dramatic effect on results! Why dramatic? – Because numbers might be telling opposite stories, either giving you a true picture or misleading you about what’s happening. But let’s get to a concrete example! We start with the same […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 22, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad I keep reviewing NeoLoad Containers, this reusable units, serving the same way as functions in a function library. The main outcome we want to get from load session is measurements – response time, errors, throughput, etc. All tools allow obtaining measurements from individual requests posted and some tools allow obtaining aggregate […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 16, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad I’ve quickly mentioned containers here. Now I want to get back to this concept with regards to load execution delays, commonly referred as “Think Time” and “Pace Time”. Same as typical user makes pauses while working with an application, the load script needs to delay execution for periods of time in […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 15, 2012
Parent page: Load/Performance Testing with NeoLoad You probably don’t want to rewrite your load testing scripts just because you need to run them against another server. With NeoLoad you can re-point them with one of the following. Change ‘server’ parameter in call of GET/POST methods Go to Design tab Select Virtual User – your script […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Feb 15, 2012
(Click on the picture to view it full-size in a separate browser window) ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 26, 2011
Remote exploration of functionalities is one of the things I enjoy in load testing. I don’t like the definition as “non-functional” though. “Para-functional” sounds better, but (at least for me) thinking of those functionalities as system or service functionalities helps to assess them from purpose/value/risks perspectives. You can’t reach them manually, you can’t even see them, […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 23, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today I put all examples together. Here’s our XML record simulating log data of a test session. XML Source The following line <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”.\LogView4.xsl”?> instructs the web browser to use XSL script for visualization of XML data. Web-page Report And here’s the source code of the script XSL Source […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 14, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today’s post is a little bit of a side mini-project within the test reports theme. What I wanted is to add more structure in test logs, but made it summarized. So I went to explore about simple approaches in that. Very often, on static pages (without AJAX) the approach used is […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on May 25, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Let’s now take the examples from the previous post, and add more style. Here’s our XML record simulating log data of a test session. XML Source Did you notice the following line? <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”.\LogView3.xsl”?> This is how we instruct the web browser to use XSL script for visualization of XML data. […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 14, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today I continue with more complex examples using previously demonstrated XSL parsing nodes grouped into sub-templates. Here’s our XML record simulating log data of a test session. XML Source Note that the structure of XML file is not identical to the previous examples. It has more complexities and dependencies that need […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 04, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today I present XML Tree to HTML Table transformation example. Here’s our XML record simulating logged test steps. XML Source Did you notice the following line? <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”.\Tree2Table.xsl”?> This is how we instruct the web browser to use XSL script for visualization of XML data. Web-page Report And here’s […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 03, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today I present example on dynamically building HTML nodes, with XSL, and from XML data. Here’s our XML record simulating log data of a test session. XML Source Did you notice the following line? <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”.\LogView1.xsl”?> This is how we instruct the web browser to use XSL script for […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 02, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports Today I present example of an HTML Table populated with XML data. Here’s our XML record simulating stats data of a test session. XML Source Did you notice the following line? <?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”.\StatsTable.xsl”?> This is how we instruct the web browser to use XSL script for visualization of XML […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Mar 01, 2011
Parent page: Generating Test Reports The Approach The previous post sets a lot of requirements altogether. Let’s try now to put some answers. How we can have a free, portable, yet powerful viewer? If we go with a web-page format, we can use a web browser for that purpose. If we go with XML format […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Feb 14, 2011
Whether it’s an all-round automation tool, like TestComplete, or a lightweight Session-Based Exploratory Testing assistant, like RapidReporter, generating good test reports is a challenging task. Obviously, hand-crafted reports would be much better, and live communication is an ideal. Though quite often testers have to report in writing and/or remotely. And if testing is conducted with assistance of a […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 16, 2010
Mind mapping is an extremely useful analysis and design tool. Though distinguish it with other roles, like presentation. Don’t waste your creativity, and don’t try to make a mind map fancy during brainstorming phase. Focus on the problem you solve. See also On importance of test log Telling testing story ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 07, 2010
Sometimes a PC goes to sleep, launches screensaver or locks the desktop during a long synchronization periods or other GUI inactivity periods, like generation of reports or batch processing. Adding the function below makes the script periodically moving mouse to avoid breaking of the execution. Place the call to the function within your time-consuming loops […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Sep 02, 2010
Mind Map Functions Comparison: One-To-One Relationship 1-1 Comparison: isValueEqual 1-1 Comparison: isValueLess 1-1 Comparison: isValueEqualOrLess 1-1 Comparison: isValueGreater 1-1 Comparison: isValueEqualOrGreater 1-1 Comparison: MatchIn / MatchFor Comparison: One-To-Many Relationship 1-N Comparison: isValueInRange 1-N Comparison: isValueInSet Comparison: Many-To-Many Relationship N-N Comparison: isSetEqual N-N Comparison: isRecordEqual N-N ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 12, 2010
Reference Page: Comparison Rules Automatic Comparison Rules Relationship: Many-to-Many / Rule: Match For Set in Another Set Definitions Supported data types: String, Number, Date Supported data structures: Vector Comparison of values of different data types always returns False. Comparison of values of unsupported data types always returns False. Vector data structure is presented by a set […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 11, 2010
Reference Page: Comparison Rules Automatic Comparison Rules Relationship: Many-to-Many / Rule: Set Match In [Another Set] Definitions Supported data types: String, Number, Date Supported data structures: Vector Comparison of values of different data types always returns False. Comparison of values of unsupported data types always returns False. Vector data structure is presented by a set […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 09, 2010
Reference Page: Comparison Rules Automatic Comparison Rules Relationship: Many-to-Many / Rule: Is Data Record [in Dictionary] Equal To Another One Definitions Supported data types: String, Number, Date Supported data structures: Dictionary (Associative Array) Comparison of values of different data types always returns False. Comparison of values of unsupported data types always returns False. A record is […] ...
Posted by Albert Gareev on Aug 05, 2010
Reference Page: Comparison Rules Automatic Comparison Rules Relationship: Many-to-Many / Rule: Is Set Equal Definitions Supported data types: String, Number, Date Supported data structures: Vector Comparison of values of different data types always returns False. Comparison of values of unsupported data types always returns False. Vector data structure is presented by a set (un-ordered array) of […] ...
