Apply Performance Testing with JMeter

Question

I'm new in software testing in relation to performance testing.

I found an interesting testing tool named JMeter for my project that is created in ASP.net MVC

The next question is about how I should go about the performance testing.

Should I have an isolated phase for performance testing? or should it done in development phase?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Jmeter is a great load testing tool, that you could use to look into the performance of your web application. I wouldn't do any performance testing until the website is in a somewhat stable state, so you are able to get the best results from the tests. One thing to consider when using this tool inside of an ASP.net Microsoft solution, is that Jmeter plays best with a java environment. If the tools are at your disposal look for MS test tools inside of visual studio, they work extremely well to test ASP.net applications, and you are able to perform a wider set of tests at greater ease. As a general rule you are looking to do performance testing after you are done with the GUI testing phase of development.

Answer 2

I would suggest to start performance testing as early as you can as if there will be a huge bottleneck it is better to have it identified and fixed at early stages as if it occurs somewhere in pre-release it may cause a huge overhead in regards to efforts required to fix it.

So

• start testing as soon as possible
• add a build step running JMeter test to continuous integration system, for instance there is Jenkins Performance Plugin so in case of performance degradation you'll be able to flag it to developers. It may be a short test with not that high load just to protect from regressions
• run full performance test when major feature is added

If you're new to JMeter I believe ASP.NET Login Testing with JMeter article will be extremely useful.

Answer 3

If I were you I would use ASP.Net Profiler

It will integrate nicely with your development (I am assuming Visual Studio because of the language choice). If you want to expand that into Load Testing and Stress Testing I would recommend those I have linked as a bit of further reading

If you have a budget available I would recommend Resharper and in particular dotTrace within it

JMeter is a very good Load testing tool but isn't designed as a Performance Testing tool. Also, I have found it difficult to integrate into a .Net development environment due to the underlying technology differences. But your mileage may vary.

Answer 4

Jmeter is an awesome open source tool for performance testing websites and web applications. I like to use Jmeter for my performance tests.

BUT

I prefer to have an isolated phase for performance testing. I would never execute performance tests in development phase. The reason behind this being in the development phase there the project is not completely developed yet. You will have to develop stubs and drivers to replace the missing components to do a performance test on a module. Plus there are also bugs and issues in the functionality.

For an application or website to be ready for performance testing you first have to fix all the functional issues along with broken links and components. Performance tests make HTTP(s) requests to the servers and receive the response and during that they measure the duration, throughput, server health, etc. So for an HTTP(s) request and response to be successful you need to make sure that the functionality really works properly and there are not broken links and components. Hence, I prefer completing all my design and functional tests first and after that I move on to the Performance Testing phase.

If there is broken UI or functionality then all you will get in repose of a HTTP(s) request is a error messages and for broken links you will receive 404 errors. These are not really performance issues and hence you will not be able to analyse the performance for your application or website.

Happy Testing :)