Case Study: Continuous Performance Testing

Conduct performance testing frequently, many times a day. How? Make it easy by executing them in a CT server.

In a previous article, Courtney showed performance testing using Mechanize (Ruby) library. To make performance testing useful, we must run the performance tests (using thread-based, e.g. Mechanize, or browser-based, e.g. Selenium) in a CT Server. By doing that, we can easily compare the timings (from history), which is essential for performance testing.

Here is how I do performance testing:

1. Click the “Build Now” button on a project in a BuildWise CT server.
   BuildWise will fetch the latest performance test scripts (from Git) and run them.
2. Check the results in a minute or two
   performance testing execution is usually very fast

I call this “Continuous Performance Testing” ( in my book, Practical Performance and Load Testing).

Below is a run of 10 Mechanize performance tests for my WhenWise app, in a CT server.

A run of several Mechanize performance tests in a BuildWise CT Server