When humans are not perfect, how can we expect softwares, websites and apps to be perfect? No company, even of the highest ranking is immune to crashes. But definitely there are measures to ensure your website functions smartly. You should work towards using the best combination of plans and execution that makes your website/app perform in the most efficient way.
Most often there is a lack of understanding the difference between performance testing and performance monitoring. Let us clearly know these differences:
Testing Vs Monitoring
Reproducing the production like scenario and trying to break the system using different business scenarios is testing. This reproduction of scenarios can be accomplished using automated scripts and regression testing is achieved in this fashion. Scripts help the testers simulate the production scenario and test it under production like conditions. In case of performance testing, after reproducing the production like scenario, many performance issues observed at the GUI and database end are identified.
Monitoring involves watching the systems, servers and infrastructure of the application when the testing is under process. Monitoring plays a key role during performance testing wherein the load subjected on the application may degrade the performance of the system. Issues related to actual memory, network bandwidth and CPU cycles are resolved using monitor.
What we see Vs. What it is – Performance of system
Mobile & Web Performance Testing is not similar to each other. Mobile apps require specialized testing strategies along three key vectors that don’t typically apply to traditional web-based apps. Some key differences include:
- Different handset used by different users
- Network bandwidth at different locations
- Variation in volume of data downloaded by different users
- Usage of apps differ from user to user
These differences can lead to performance numbers that are drastically different from those of real numbers. Thus complimenting server monitoring with performance testing can help the team in achieving improved performance to a great extent.
Testing in Dev, QA, Performance test & Production environments
Performance testing can be performed in all these environments in some or other format. Dev is the first infra where the app is tested for its functionality. QA is where the app is again tested for its functionality by testers. Sometimes performance testing is also conducted in the QA environment. However the best situation is to test the application under load in a separate performance test environment which is scaled up as much as that of the production environment. While testing on performance test environment, monitoring the infrastructure helps in identifying a lot more performance issues. A real time production test scenario helps in catching many performance issues before release.
Monitoring helps in identifying issues which were missed out in testing.
Thus by the above we can figure out that performance testing & performance monitoring have their own definitions but are closely related. Performance Testing has a lot to contribute to mobile app development and the app gains a lot from server monitoring too during the testing.
Earlier in most companies these two functions were regarded as two different groups but now-a-days the tests are intended in such a fashion that both testing and monitoring are performed concurrently. The organizations have learnt that it bolsters application/website performance and thus enhances the business.
