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Highlights

Create performance tests quickly without writing or editing code

Automate the identification and manage-ment of dynamic server responses

Identify the presence and cause of system performance bottlenecks

Collect and integrate server resource monitoring data with application perfor-mance measurements

Quickly assess performance results against application SLA targets

Integrate with IBM Rational Quality Manager to provide stakeholder visibility across all software quality activities

IBM Rational Performance Tester

Assess application scalability before deployment

After deploying applications, many development teams can experience trouble with application availability, reliability and scalability for a variety of reasons. A lack of load testing experience can complicate the creation of performance tests. Actual user behavior might not be understood or anticipated. The means for quickly identifying performance bottlenecks might not be available.

IBM Rational Performance Tester is a tool for creating, running and analyzing performance tests. It is designed to help teams validate the scalability and reliability of their web and enterprise applications before deployment. The software includes a test recorder, automated data manipulation capabilities, flexible scheduling, reporting and a scalable execution engine to help your team ensure that your applications are prepared to handle large user loads.

Creating tests rapidly

Todays software applications are complex, interconnected and often depend on several different sources of data and even other apps. These characteristics require a proactive approach to testing and strategic methods that can mitigate the risks of system change and prove quality through structure and control. Based on years of experience with testing almost countless software builds and on the lessons learned in thousandsIBM SoftwareData Sheet

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of client engagements, IBM Rational test solutions are inte-grated and automated to help you contain defects, test early and continuously, and obtain an optimized return on testing effort. Performance testing is part of these integrated solutions. Rational Performance Tester software features capabilities that are explicitly designed to help you create performance tests quickly, regardless of your skill level. It is also designed to encourage participation from different development domains.

To record a test, you simply use a browser or desktop client that interacts with the targeted web-based application or ERP solu-tion. With a floating toolbar, you can add annotations and screen captures to document the workflow as you record. You can also create modular components at the same time; Rational Performance Tester can automatically create parameters so you can link your test components in a variety of test scenarios. A concise, tree-based editor presents the resulting test. Although it masks the underlying code, it can provide details to the test automation expert if needed. With an application-specific viewer, you can view each visited page or screen offline to review user interactions and the order of transactions.

Understanding application data relationships

Data provided during one stage of a test is often passed along for use in subsequent stages. For a successful performance test, maintaining the integrity of these relationships is critical. For reliable text execution and accurate load simulation, the auto-matic data correlation engine in Rational Performance Tester can identify and maintain application data relationships without any mapping, test editing or other user interaction. You can also

create custom data correlation rules for applications with unique data behavior. These rules can be saved and reused in multiple projects to create resilient, large-scale multiuser tests.

The Center of Excellence and Value Prototyping at SAP successfully used IBM Rational Performance Tester to simulate user load on a SAP system and measure the systems behavior. The solution simplified data correlation during performance testing. As a result, the test development time was reduced to a single day.

Creating data-driven tests

To ensure a realistic load and prevent server caching, each virtual tester might be required to provide unique data during a test. For example, to test the login functionality of a system, each virtual tester should access the system with a unique user ID and password. Rational Performance Tester fully supports this method of data-driven testing. It automatically detects variable data entered during test recording and marks these locations for data substitution so you can map these items to rows and columns in spreadsheet-like data pools. While the test is running, the data pools are accessed to provide unique data for each virtual tester. For applications that use binary or encoded data, the test editor provides a variety of encodings for quick visualization, along with built-in data transforms that convert encoded data to ASCII, XML or other forms. Once the data is readable in the test editor you can identify and create parameters for data-driven test scenarios.

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Figure 1. Data transforms simplify working with encoded data in your test.

Emulating real-world workloads

To obtain valuable performance results, modeling scenarios that reflect how the application will really be used in production is crucial. With Rational Performance Tester, you combine your performance tests into a variety of realistic scenarios. You can use the visual workload scheduler to define multi-user workloads that vary over time. Or you can set schedules to automatically increase load at specific intervals and synchronize user events to simulate critical peak capacity activities. Rational Performance Tester helps you quickly compare performance metrics for these varying load stages and analyze multiple load scenarios in a single test run.

Figure 2. A visual workload scheduler simplifies the creation of complex multi-user load tests.

Identifying the presence and cause of performance bottlenecks

Rational Performance Tester is designed to help determine the source of a performance problem, which is often time-consuming and challenging. It can collect system resource counters and overlay them on performance graphs to correlate system bottlenecks with poor service or longer application response times so you can identify the server component responsible for the bottleneck. You can collect resource

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statistics from Windows, UNIX and Linux systems, Java Virtual Machines, SNMP components and database servers, along with web and application servers from IBM, Oracle, SAP and others.

Rational Performance Tester also integrates with IBM Rational Application Performance Analyzer so you can determine the root cause of a performance issue by mapping transaction response times by physical application tier down to the application source code. You can obtain the J2EE tier-to-tier response time breakdown for IBM WebSphere and Oracle WebLogic application servers and use this information to help resolve performance defects.

Data Sheet

Assessing actual performance versus objectives faster

The objective of a performance test is to determine whether your application meets the expected scalability and service level requirements. With Rational Performance Tester, you can define performance requirements that are automatically analyzed at the end of a test. A report details the overall verdict, the status of each performance requirement and a visual assess-

ment of the quality of your results. You can define performance criteria based on requests, web pages, transactions or server health resource counters using minimum, maximum, average, percentile or standard deviation measurements.

As part of the testing process, you might also want to understand how your code or system tuning is affecting the scalability of your system. Rational Performance Tester can compare results between different load stages in a test or between different test runs. These comparisons provide repeated assessments that can reveal whether you are making progress or performance is being affected.

Figure 3. Rational Performance Tester includes a wide set of resource monitors to help you identify performance bottlenecks.

Figure 4. At the end of a test run, performance is automatically verified against SLA requirements.

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Testing a broad range of environments

Rational Performance Tester incorporates a wide range of protocols and technologies to help simplify and accelerate your performance testing efforts. It includes support for web applications and a variety of web authentication methods, Flex (AMF3), Silverlight, Windows Communication Foundation, TN3270, Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop

and major ERP platforms from SAP and Oracle.

Providing a scalable and flexible load architecture

Rational Performance Tester is designed to make optimum use of available processing and memory resources to create large-scale load scenarios. Whether you have a variety of small systems, a few large load drivers or a combination, you get the flexibility to distribute and use your existing infrastructure for your load testing.

Moving forward

As part of the software testing process, performance should be analyzed for several characteristics. Applications can be optimized for end-user response times or transaction through-put, or you may need to ensure they can scale for peak loads.

Rational Performance Tester software is designed to reduce the complexity of creating load tests that analyze these behaviors while providing flexible workload scheduling and reporting capabilities. Data Sheet

To learn more about how Rational Performance Tester can help you validate your applications for real-world use, you can:

Contact an IBM Rational specialist and learn how you can conduct a test infrastructure assessment to understand your testing requirements.

Schedule a site survey or performance review with IBM.

Read Lessons from testing service-oriented architectures,

an IBM white paper that shares eight important issues to consider when testing.

Download a free trial version of Rational Performance Tester at ibm.com/software/awdtools/tester/performance

In addition, IBM Global Business Services offers a combina-tion of services, experience and Rational technology knowledge to help you implement a Rational quality management system designed to meet your specific requirements.

Why IBM?

IBM Rational test solutions are based on many years of experience with software delivery. IBMs goal is to help you overcome the challenges of testing by providing quality man-agement and testing solutions that can transform the way you validate software. Quality management and testing activities become a shared responsibility, not isolated and disconnected. You can more easily manage your existing resources, overcome schedule constraints and increase your team productivity.

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For more information

To learn more about IBM Rational Performance Tester, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/software/awdtools/tester/performance

Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the software capabilities that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. Well partner with

credit-qualified clients to customize a financing solution to suit your business and development goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. Fund your critical IT investment and propel your business forward with IBM Global Financing. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing.

About the Author :- Mr Asish Kumar Mohanty. BE from NIST, Change Management from Harvard Business school .

Copyright IBM Corporation 2013

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