PETA-Load

Load and stress test component

Tom deMarco: "You cannot control what you cannot measure."

Load and stress tests belong to the non-functional test category and are used to validate the system under test at varying degrees of load.

As an example one would use a stress test to determine the maximum amount of simultaneous users the system is able to handle inside a given parameter range. Load tests allow to simulate realistic user behavior to test the expected server load before placing a production system online.

With PETA-Load you are able to simulate thousands of user requests in parallel which reenact different business use-cases to validate your hardware configurations prior to going live of the system under test.

The PETA-Webrecorder helps you to generate a large amount of test cases in short time.

Usage

Load tests

How does the software perform in case of a large amount of users?
How does the software perform with a large amount of data to process?
Where and when do performance problems arise?
Does the system work as specified?
Is the hardware adequately dimensioned for peak load situations?

Stress tests

Does the software still work when reaching the specified boundary conditions? Where are the limits of the system?
Is the system recovering correctly from overload situations?
Does the software correctly handle overload scenarios? Is the stored data still consistent?
How does the throughput of the system scale with better hardware?

Features:

Reusability

Already implemented functional tests can be applied for load scenarios on the system under test.

Distribution

For load generation it is possible to employ single load clients as well as clusters of client machines.

Platform independence

PETA-Load allows the combined use of load clients on different platforms.

Extensive reporting

Customizable graphical evaluation of log files.