04 Appendices

Term

Description

Test environment

The physical environment on which the performance tests are executed. This includes (virtual) hardware, software, and network configurations.

Response time

Response time is a measure of how responsive an application or subsystem is to a client request.

Throughput

Throughput is the number of units of work that can be handled per unit of time; for instance, requests per second, calls per day, hits per second, reports per year, etc.

Performance testing

This type of testing determines or validates the speed, scalability, and/or stability characteristics of the system or application under test. Performance is concerned with achieving response times, throughput, and resource-utilization levels that meet the performance objectives for the project or product. In this guide, performance testing represents the superset of all of the other subcategories of performance-related testing.

Load testing

This subcategory of performance testing is focused on determining or validating performance characteristics of the system or application under test when subjected to workloads and load volumes anticipated during production operations.

Stress testing

This subcategory of performance testing is focused on determining or validating performance characteristics of the system or application under test when subjected to conditions beyond those anticipated during production operations.

Workload

Workload is the stimulus applied to a system, application, or component to simulate a usage pattern, in regard to concurrency and/or data inputs. The workload includes the total number of users, concurrent active users, data volumes, and transaction volumes, along with the transaction mix. For performance modeling, you associate a workload with an individual scenario.

Resource utilization

Resource utilization is the cost of the project in terms of system resources. The primary resources are processor, memory, disk I/O, and network I/O.

Metrics

Metrics are measurements obtained by running performance tests as expressed on a commonly understood scale. Some metrics commonly obtained through performance tests include processor utilization over time and memory usage by load.