I think testing real world usage is very important. If your application can't handle 100 users doing everyday tasks at a normal pace then testing with 200 users doing resource intensive tasks at a very fast pace doesn't do any good.
One thing you can point out to your dev lead is that you are load testing the server, and the server doesn't see people clicking through links it sees requests and generates responses. As far as generating a realistic user simulation, I think JMeter has everything you need. Someone mentioned think times already (I think its best to record them as Sebb mentioned ... the docs tell you how to record them into a gaussian timer which is best). Ramp-up times are important. And another important thing is using thread groups and JMeter controllers to simulate a real workload distribution. For example, if you have an online music store and your simulation had every user eventually making a purchase so that the "browse music" section got just as much traffic as the "buy music" section ... that would not be realistic. You can use JMeter to have some users that browse also buy and others just abandon the site. I've learned a lot about performance testing from these articles: http://www.perftestplus.com/pubs.htm. There is a series of articles called "User Experience, not Metrics" (about 2/3 down the page) that I have found very useful. I hope they help you too. Regards, matt. -----Original Message----- From: James Hill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 6:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Overview questions Hi list. I'll try and keep this short. I've been using jmeter for a couple of weeks now and while I'm still a newbie I find it very easy to use - once I got past a couple of hiccups. I've been building a suite of load tests for a site in development via proxy recording but the dev lead wants me to test the pages "as a real world user would" whatever that means. I think what he's getting at is for me to reassure him (and more importantly the client) that jmeter will be loading up the server as a bunch of users would i.e. making page requests that include all the html, css, images, javascript. Unfortunately what I think his "real user" comment is getting at is asking "Does jmeter access a site like a user would i.e. clicking through the links, etc." I'm sure it doesn't, but how do I go about telling him that jmeter does in fact mimic a real world load i.e. pages being requested and loaded like they would be by users clicking on links? I've been reading doco but so far haven't come across something I can quote at him. I think he's nervous jmeter won't actually do what I tell him it does. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
