The Art of Application Performance Testing: Help for Programmers and Quality Assurance

by Ian Molyneaux

This practical book provides a step-by-step approach to testing mission-critical applications for scalability and performance before they're deployed -- a vital topic to which other books devote one chapter, if that.

Businesses today live and die by network applications and web services. Because of the increasing complexity of these programs, and the pressure to deploy them quickly, many professionals don't take the time to ensure that they'll perform well and scale effectively. The Art of Application Performance Testing explains the complete life cycle of the testing process, and demonstrates best practices to help you plan, gain approval for, coordinate, and conduct performance tests on your applications. With this book, you'll learn to: Written by a consultant with 30 years of experience in the IT industry and over 12 years experience with performance testing, this easy-to-read book is illustrated with real-world examples and packed with practical advice. The Art of Application Performance Testing thoroughly explains the pitfalls of an inadequate testing strategy and offers you a robust, structured approach for ensuring that your applications perform well and scale effectively when the need arises.

"Ian has maintained a vendor-agnostic methodology beautifully in this material. The metrics and graphs, along with background information provided in his case studies, eloquently convey to the reader, 'Methodology above all, tools at your discretion...' Ian's expertise shines through throughout the entire reading experience."-- Matt St. Onge, Enterprise Solution Architect, HCL Technologies America / Teradyne

Genres: Nonfiction, Software, Technology, Programming, Computers

158 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2008

Reviews

[Petric Coroli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those tech readings that give you a necessary minimum to get you going with decent level of confidence. I can surely say - I wish I had this book on my shelf before my first dive into performance testing realm. Author does a good job of making things clear from the start - setting a structure, priorities, and following those throughout the entire reading.
The book would be useful to those aspiring to performance testing, taking them through the entire adventure - what to start with, things to watch out for, common mistakes, and some of the best practices. Those who already had a taste of performance testing would find this book as a pretty thorough checklist that's always nice to have.

[Mike Fowler · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of the book provides a good overall approach and strategy with ample for you to consider for a performance test process. Much of this will likely be known to someone experienced in the field, but it is a useful recap.

The second half of the book was really just lists upon lists of things to do and consider, often repeating what has come before. This section is somewhat dated too, with coverage of technology stacks contemporary development has mostly abandoned. In the end I merely skimmed the final 60 pages or so.

[Hadeel Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

informative and simple

[Anita Pal · Rating 2 out of 5]

By all standards, this may be a short book, but it was also boring and -- from a technical perspective -- not all that interesting, to be honest.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Especially if you have some knowledge and need a list of pitfalls and complexity that might not be considered.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Designed for initiation of a performance testing program. Discussion of maintaining an existing program or working with a performance test group on a per-project basis would have extended the appeal. This would involve determining project owner acceptability of performance failure (mirroring comments on p. 5), indicating performance test options for projects (p. 39), involving performance engineers during project scoping and estimation (p. 55), and release considerations based on KPIs (p. 86).

[Jason Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Designed for initiation of a performance testing program. Discussion of maintaining an existing program or working with a performance test group on a per-project basis would have extended the appeal. This would involve determining project owner acceptability of performance failure (mirroring comments on p. 5), indicating performance test options for projects (p. 39), involving performance engineers during project scoping and estimation (p. 55), and release considerations based on KPIs (p. 86).

[Leandro Melendez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aunque se que es medio dificil cubrir todo el universo que son las pruebas de carga, el libro de Ian esta bien explicado en los temas que alcanzó a cubrir sin entrar demasiado en tecnicismos muy profundos.

Tiene una forma clara de explicar muchas cosas que debo admitir me abrio los ojos en un par de temas mas que no tenia presentes. Lo que si me sigue dando un poco de ruido es usar intercambiable la palabra performance con load... pero a veces es inevitable.

Este libro es crucial para cualquier ingeniero de performance aspirante o veterano.
Recomendadisimo!

[Oleksandr Romanov · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonderful book for getting an initial overview of performance testing. The reader will find the whole bunch of information on how to plan, prepare, execute performance tests for almost any kind of application and technology. The author gives us the main ideas - not the tutorials about specific tool.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a performance tester, I thought that some of its content was interesting and useful; however, the types of testing I do is very different from what is covered in this work. I recommend it, but think that you particularly need to be testing (web) applications to gain the most benefit.

(see http://elegantc.blogspot.com/2018/07/...)

[Simon Eskildsen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lots of words, little substance. At some point, when I realized I'd read 50 pages with not a single highlight I started skimming rapidly. I was looking for some clever ideas on how to do performance testing, but I found nothing interesting. It wasn't clear to me what type of systems the author had built to make them credible on this topic. No dice... disappointed from the intriguing title.

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book does not lay out a step by step testing strategy instead it tells you in lots of different ways that you need to plan and consider that testing will be more complex than you expect. I found no useful information in this book.

[Robert Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly it's hard to find anything good written about performance testing. This short book is a good primer for anyone looking for the basics on performance testing.

[Kyle]

A good introduction to performance testing. This helped me appreciate the domain of performance testing and make choices as to where I want to start in this area.

[Wojciech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice

[Farah Agha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book. It deals with the fundamentals of Performance testing. It explained the process also described the things to be considered before starting the test.

[Mihai Ciobanu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to reed this book.

[Tom Kox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fine introduction to the subject matter. Contains a number of handy checklists that should very useful at the start of any performance testing project.

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on non-functional testing. It covers the full test cycle from planning to analyzis and introduce the reader to best practices, useful check lists and examples of what might go wrong.

[German Dominguez Montes · Rating 5 out of 5]

un poco desactualizado en tecnologías, pero muy bueno en las prácticas. Espero tener las nueva edición pronto.

[Stefan Teixeira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really amazing introduction to performance testing. If you want to start working with performance testing, I definitely recommend to read this book before studying about specific tools.