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Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
I was asked recently to describe in my own words what qualities a good performance engineer would have, as they were trying to make a decision on hiring a resource for their company. I came up with some stuff and thought it might be good to share it with you and offer it up as a discussion topic in the Forums for the site. Perhaps you can add your own input and help businesses make informed hiring Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
Those of you following my columns know that I have laid out in some detail how to begin building a Center of Excellence (COE) around performance testing, and centralizing it. Now I want to expound on three models that performance testing groups generally follow. Encapsulation refers to a silo approach. Enablement means allowing resources from other groups to self-govern their performance. Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
For some time, Microsoft has published their own capacity planning model called Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) . They also offer their own stress testing tools (WAST, ACT, etc) that can be used as add-ons to Visual Studio or stand alone tools for testing Microsoft applications. I was recently asked why I don’t recommend this method and those tools to accomplish performance goals, rather tha Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
In the past two sessions, I have defined one of the new product offerings from Mercury Interactive – the Performance Center product, and how it is used within the vision of Business Technology Optimization (BTO).
Here is the link to part 1 and here is the link to part 2.
Up to this point we have separated the Mercury product from the concept of a Center of Excellence (CoE). Now what about thi Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online. This article has been modified for relevancy.

In part 1 of this series, we talked in general about the Performance Center product. Many of us out in the field who use LoadRunner are wondering if this is just a repackaging of old products to make them look new again, or if this a “revolution” as is claimed. We talked about the concept of a “Center of Excellence” and some of the qualities I had i Read Entire Entry

Note: This is an article originally written by James Pulley for Loadtester.com 11/23/2003 and has been migrated to the Northway Solutions Group web site.
It is unfortunately clear that everyday more and more people enter our quality assurance profession with very little software architecture of engineering background to draw from. This is bad enough on the functional side, but is getting darn near catastrophic on the performance side. And, by the way, this is for all vendors, not just Mercury. It just may be more apparent here due to Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
In 2002, after reviewing the new launch of the Business Technology Optimization (BTO) initiative by Mercury at their Worldwide User Conference, I had the same feeling as when I first heard about .NET or “web services”. It was supposed to change the world, but no one could really explain what it was. I could parrot what I had heard, but it was not a revelation to me. This year, at the 2003 Mercury Read Entire Entry

Note: This article was originally posted on Loadtester.com, and has been migrated to the Northway web site to maintain the content online.
According to Robert B. Miller[1], here are acceptable response times for various actions:

One tenth of a second (0.1) is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
One second (1.0) is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to remain uninterrupted, even though Read Entire Entry