Software developers need to keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of users can simultaneously access the application on the Internet. Therefore, due to the load on the system, unpredictable delays are possible, which may disappoint users who are most likely to reject the application. On the other hand, adequate tests and the application tuning to ensure optimal performance under heavy loads prove the optimal operation of the program, and also supply the data necessary for planning the addition of more hardware in the future. The following real example shows with what difficulties one has to face if neglecting conducting adequate performance testing.
It is reasonable to have quality product requirements before starting designing the product itself. To solve this task many manufacturers ask the specialists of a Ukrainian technical writing company to fill-in the documentation with relevant, credible, timely and correct information.
A real example is peak network traffic
The news flow about the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 led to a threefold increase in traffic on the Microsoft News Web site. In the days that followed, it did not diminish, as this event continued to be in the public interest. As a result, the load time of all the elements of this site pages increased to an unacceptable level, and Web servers had to be rebooted every two hours because of the critical drop in the amount of available memory. Later it was found that the growth of the project schedule involved the memory leaks that had occurred on this site before, there was a methodology that let to run testing beforehand and therefore prevent unacceptable degradation of Website performance even in the event of sudden surges of the schedule caused by extraordinary events like those that took place on September 11, 2001.
The question arises: “How one can solve the task of executing an accurate performance test and setting up a Web application?” Unfortunately, there is no single correct answer to this question. Such methodologies are constantly evolving, which is facilitated by the emergence of new tools that allow you to obtain more accurate results. For a simple Website, it is sometimes enough to have a set of static scenarios, but for a complex ecommerce site it is impossible to accurately predict the application’s response under heavy load conditions without performance modeling tools and dynamic load scenarios. Since the acceptable performance of a Website depends on the application and architecture used, the analysis of Website performance can be considered more than a science. However, effective performance testing aims to ensure acceptable levels of application performance, whatever they are.
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