Foundations of Web Performance Testing: 1-Day Workshop @BugDebug

I’m going to conduct a 1-day public workshop -”Foundations of Web Performance Testing – A Tool-agnostic Tutorial” @ BugDebug conference, Chennai on 25th March. The workshop is scheduled on the second day of the conference, day 1 being the presentations day which has an enviable speaker list for any conference. Along with my workshop, there is a workshop on exploratory testing by Pradeep Soundararajan and another one on security testing by Santhosh Tuppad. All these three would run in parallel to each other.

You can register for the workshop at this link.

Following is a brief write up about the workshop which can also be found on the BugDebug website.

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Introduction

I’ve put together this workshop to focus on the concepts that form the basis of any successful web performance testing project. It covers the full performance testing life cycle. Unlike its cousins, performance testing hugely depends on the simulation of not just one user, rather on the simulation of a user community. Even an incorrect performance test would give results and beautiful plots which can be analyzed and a report can be furnished. More often than not, such performance tests are incorrectly designed and hence the performance data collected is wrong. This workshop focuses on HTTP protocol, planning and designing a performance test in the right manner, scripting challenges and so on.

As per my observation, testers often confuse performance testing knowledge with the knowledge of using a tool. A given performance testing tool just provides a sub-set of features to support performance testing with its own flavor of the scripting language, GUI design, number of components, monitoring options etc. If one has knowledge of web performance testing, then the usage of any given tool would be more effective. Also, as testers need to switch frequently from one tool to another based on the context, having solid foundations on the core subject comes handy.

Methodology

Presentation, Questioning, Debating, Exercises

Intended Audience

Any tester or developer who wants to explore the intricacies of web performance testing

Audience Pre-requisites

Some prior experience in web application testing or development would be a plus.

Contents

• What performance means and how to find it
• Performance testing lifecycle
• HTTP Protocol – What a performance tester needs to know
• The concept of a web proxy
• Planning and designing performance tests
• Challenges in Scripting
• Monitoring Considerations
• Results Analysis
• How a performance test tool maps to the discussed concepts

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I hope that the above gives you a high level picture of the workshop. In case you are interested, I would encourage you to register at the earliest!