Performance Test Tools
There are loads of performance test tools available so I have broken them down into four segments. These segments are shown on the diagram below. The segments are shown relative to their position based on the cost and complexity/coverage of the tool.
The four segments are opensource tools that generally cover the web arena, their are then commodity tools that cover the web arena but are paid for. There are then the enterprise tools that can test a wider range of system such as Oracle Forms, SAP etc. Finally there are boutique tools that are point solutions for specific technologies or products and range in all cost and complexity.
Enterprise wide Performance Test Tools
This section lists the tools that can emulate many different types of uses communicating using different protocol to the system under test. For example you may to test a system that has user accessing it via the web, citrix and using Oracle financials. I guess you could call these tool “enterprise” load testing tools:
Boutique Performance Test Tools
These are tools that work for specific products or technologies that may not be widely adopted or are directed to individual components of the enterprise. You will often find that these tools often have “pre-package” scripts where you can alter the workload mix and the load but not tailor the script to match the business process. Many off these tools are more akin to benchmarking tools rather than performance load tools
Commodity Performance Test Tools
As the world has moved predominately over to accessing applications via an internet browser and web services there has been a growth in tools that cater to this market. They are often simpler and cheaper than the enterprise tools. The often trying to simply the process of creating the test scripts without the need for complex scripting. Although these tools focus mainly on browser based system they are not all similar, these tools could range from testing simple HTML through to complex Internet frameworks :
Open Source Performance Test Tools
As the world has moved over to accessing applications via a internet browser and webservices here has been a growth in tools that cater to this market. They are often simpler and cheap to use than the commodity tools but have a limit range of protocols:
- JMeter
- For a full list try looking at http://www.opensourcetesting.org/performance.php
Also there are some tools that
Cloud Based Testing
In addition to the types of performance test tools we have seen an increase in companies that offer to test you application across the web.
1202Performance 