Patterns and Tools for Performance Testing

The growth of software applications in size and complexity is being followed by a number of specific nonfunctional requirements such as portability, interoperability, and availability on various platforms. Most often, these have been addressed by middleware or programming environment. In addition, easy customizability, adaptability, and sharing of components facilitates the development cycle. These should be understood and applied in a broader sense, i.e. to byproducts created during the development process such as programs for functional and performance testing. Much time is spent on developing test programs but their quality and quality of thus obtained results varies largely if the process is not standardized and automated. In this paper we present our experience with performance testing of a large scale suite of gateways that are used for the seamless integration of heterogeneous communication networks. We analyze the commercial and public domain tools for load generation and motivate our decision to define an in-house framework and build a distributed tool for performance, testing that is also not restricted by licensing issues and is readily available to everyone involved. Our tool is built on Visper, the object-oriented distributed programming middleware. The suitability and adaptability of the Visper model for rapid application development and the quality of produced result have proven our decision correct