load test terms: What are Transactions, request, TPS,throughput?

Question

I am completely new in load testing and want to start analyzing results of a load test. My problem is that I need a reference for the answers to be sure about its correctness.

These are my question which are in the same area.

1. What is transaction in load test and its exact difference with request? what I have read in web pages is that "a request is some amount of transactions" but I'm not sure about it and I need a proof.
2. What is TPS in load test? What I have read in website is "The number of transactions in second" The main question is that whether the transactions should be successful or not to be counted and what about throughput? Should only successful transactions should be counted or all transactions, and whether it has any difference with TPS or not?

Answer 1

In some cases transaction can stand for a single request but more often it is a series of requests representing a piece of business logic like:

1. User opens a site
2. User opens login page
3. User performs login
4. User does some stuff
5. User logs out

With some think times in between of course as a real life user doesn't hammer application continuously, he needs some time to type credentials, wait for page load, read information from page, etc. Failure at any point (1 to 5) will lead to the whole transaction failure.

See the following material which can shed some light on the terms being asked:

• JMeter Glossary
• The Load Reports

Answer 2

Transaction as mentioned in above comment is a series of requests which represent business logic.

Throughput is measure of how many transactions completed in a unit of time. It can be transaction per second, TPM, TPH, TPD (min, hour or day).