Performance testing tutorial

Performance testing tutorial – Advanced.

Jmeter Performance test scenario – Creating a Jmeter Performance test scenario

Thread Group: Thread group is the number of virtual users performing the transaction on application under test.

How to add Thread group?

Right click on the TestPlan
Select Add>Thread Group from the popup.

Performance testing best practices and activities.

As first step, Performance Engineer needs to learn the requirements, performance expectations & system architecture.

Note: To learn the performance requirements & expectations, SME (Subject matter expert ) or production user can help. This information will help to define performance goals and SLAs

Then develop best matching performance test scenarios, approach, define goals (SLAs) & sign off test plan.

Note 1: To identify the right performance test scenarios, SME can give some feedback on about the current performance issues in production / live application that he/she is facing.

Note 2: You can refer another blog of mine on different types of performance scenarios – click link load testing vs performance testing vs stress testing

Now Performance Engineer can developer V– USER scripts and execute the scripts in Controller to generate performance analysis results

Note 1: Apart from delivering performance analysis results, Performance Engineer can coordinate with other team to monitor real time performance on Database server, Application server and also make sure load balancing is working fine while stress testing.

Some of the e.g. when performance testing is needed

for Database upgrade,
Application upgrade,
Or if user complains that application performance is bad – like page response is not meeting his/her expectations.

Performance testing vs Load testing vs Stress testing vs Endurance testing

1. Performance testing – The main purpose of Performance testing is to arrive the benchmark & baseline of the system behavior (e.g response time) under normal/moderate load. This test will help performance engineer to analyse how does the application behave under normal conditions.

2. Load testing – here load will be constantly and steadily increased over a given period of time. i.e the constant load applied for a constant period of time. For example a load of 100 users are applied for 15 min.

3. Stress test – it is meant to push the system beyond the normal load limits or extreme conditions. This test is to make sure the servers don’t crash or what point it crashes. Stress test will verify the breaking point of the system or how much load, system can withstand.

For example a load of 100 users are applied for 15 min and then 150 users load is applied for next 15 min. then 200 users load is applied for next 15 min. Verify at what point system stopped to respond.

4. Endurance testing – for easy understanding, I would say it is a “Load testing on extended period” to make sure web servers are performing longer period of time. For example a load of 100 users are applied for 48 hours

Note: Once the performance testing is completed successfully, tester can assume the performance requirements are met and he can start load testing. After that Stress testing if required.

Load testing tools in the market are

1) HPE LoadRunner is from Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

2) JMeter – Apache JMeter. It is a Java based performance testing tool works on web communication layer (HTTP)

Summary about Jmeter and performance testing

Jmeter recording

How to create Jmeter scripts?

Recording Jmeter scripts using Jmeter’s HTTP(S) Test Script recorder. There are two ways

1) Manually adding scripts ( Test plan >> Tread Group >> Add>> Sampler >> HTTP Request )

2) Recording using Jmeter’s HTTP(S) Test Script recorder

How to record Jmeter scripts using HTTP(S) Test Script recorder

Prior doing that we need to configure browser and learn about the Proxy setup

Jmeter to Application server communication need to be routed through a browser Proxy for this recording purpose. For that you may need to select the Browser (here we can use Firefox browser”

1) Navigate to Firefox >> Tools >> options >> Advanced >> Network >> Settings

2) Select Manual Proxy configuration >> HTTP Proxy = localhost & Port = 8080

How to run Jmeter in Jenkins

steps:

Jenkins setup and performance plugin setup:
1) copy performance plugin into Jenkin’s home directry before you start the test.
2) to do that – you can download the performance plugin “performance.hpi” from the site https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Performance+Plugin
3) how to find the home directry of jenkins – to do that you can navigate to jenkins home page (localhost:8080) and then
4) click on “Manage Jenkins” and then click on “Configure system” the you will notice “Home directy” path in there.

Configure Jmeter and create a basic script in Jmeter:
5) download Jmeter Binary zip file from Jmeter site http://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi
6) unzip it and go to the “bin” directory of the Jmeter folder, wherre you will notice “user.properties” file.
7) open the file in notepad or notepad++ or any other text editor
8) add a line “jmeter.save.saveservice.output_format=xml” to that. Save and close the “user.properties” file
9) create a Jmeter script and make sure you can run it in non GUI mode i.e either in DOS mode or using shell scripts in MAC (note down the commands used in respective OS and it could be used in Jenkins job setup)
Note: for windows command line run, you can use the following commands

C:\[JMETER BIN directory]\jmeter.bat -Jjmeter.save.saveservice.output_format=xml -n -t C:\[JMETER script “.jmx” file] -l Jmeter_test_results.jtl

Note 1: For detailed topics on Jmeter scripts creation , please visit Jmeter , Jmeter recording

setup Jenkin’s job to run Jmeter scripts
9) go to Jenkins home page (localhost:8080) and then click on “New Item” on “Freestyle project”
10) in the “New item” page, give some name in the item name field and go to below to section “Build” and add build step
11) add build step can be either a) “execute windows batch command” for windows or b) “Execute shell” for MAC
12) provide your command in there and save.
13) Click on “Build now” which would call the Jmeter (jmx) file and run the program
14) after the run, you can verify the Jenkins console to review the results.

What is Rendezvous point with reference to performance testing

Rendezvous point is Synchronization or Wait point. Rendezvous points makes Vusers to wait during test execution and multiple Vusers will simultaneously perform a task.

Rendezvous is mainly used to emulate heavy load on a particular scenario/ transaction to test the application behavior.

How to test the latency issues in Microsoft windows version upgrades

Latency issues generally occurs as a side effects of patch updates in windows. It may occur as audio/video streaming performance issues.
Latency issues can be tested using LatencyMon or Thesycon
Note : Thesycon is more effective on lower versions on windows like 7 or lower.

Web server vs Application server vs Database server

Web server serves a web content (HTML and static content) over the HTTP protocol.

Application server is a container on which one can build and expose business logic and processes to client applications through various protocols like HTTP. Some cases it will have internal web server. Application server is heavy in terms of resource usage.

Database server refers to the back-end system of a database application using client/server architecture. The database server performs tasks such as data analysis, storage, data manipulation, archiving, and other non-user specific tasks

What is Web server?

A Web server can process HTTP requests and respond with HTML pages, provided the requests are handled by server side programs

It uses HTTP protocol to transmit the request/responses. Here Web server handled both request/response and business logic. This is more rigid design.

A web transaction using web server will be like this as below,

Browser (click operation to display some results on a grid> ==> Request goes to web server (Apache HTTP server) ==> Database

Apache Jmeter key topics for basic level users.

Performance testing – Jmeter recording steps

Performance testing – load balancing

Performance testing – Load runner

January 26, 2020May 17, 2020

Selenium Tutorial

Selenium and Jenkins

Selenium features as below

Selenium supports Cross Browser Testing. The Selenium tests can be run on multiple browsers and multiple machines and multiple Operating systems.

Supports several scripting languages like Java, Python, C#, and PHP.

Selenium uses Browser native commands. It locates and actions applied on UI elements,

Reporting are very easy and extensible.

TestNG quick summary:

TestNG’s is Selenium + reporting features. It is easy to generate reports using Listeners and Reporters in TestNG

Features of TestNG includes the following,

1) Annotations – please refer my annotation blog Annotation – TestNG’s test case priority

2) Supports parameterization/ data driven testing

3) Test cases can be grouped and parallel testing is allowed.

Automaton testing using Cucumber – Behavior driven development (BDD)

Application behavior is the main focus on BDD. The requirements are written in English which gives more readability and understandability of the requirement.

So any roles in the company (Tester, developer, end user, and techno functional person) can read it and understand it. Also this will reduce the complication in terms of missing requirement or misrepresenting or misunderstanding requirements between different roles (Developer /tester / end user)

Gherkin is a business readable language – refer below for an example. Below feature file is integrated with Selenium and are having user stories as below.

Please refer below – “feature, Scenario, Given, When, And, Then “are the Keywords below to understand on how to write a feature file.

Selenium jenkins integration steps are as below:

Jenkin related steps:
1) start jenkins by running command in DOS prompt (detailed steps in here )
2) then make sure you are able to access url : localhost:8080
3) then you need to configure jenkins to run the selenium scripts – for that click on “Manage Jenkins”
4) then click on Configure systems
5) Find out the jdk files are installed (usually in C:\ program files … folder path) and copy paste the path in JDK section “JDK Installations” in ” Configure systems” which you are already in.
6) Give JDK name “JAVA_HOME” and provide Java path below in the next field.Selenium related steps:
3) Open eclipse IDE and start new Java project
4) make sure you added selenium jars (Selenium server standalone jar file which you can download add to new project) to support selenium framework for your automation testing.
5) then create a simple selenium script – make sure it is running and completing successfully in Eclipse.
6) Also create a xml file give a name “Xml1.xml” Make sure Run “Xml1.xml” as “TestNG Suite” is working fine in Eclipse. Also notedown the xml file path in selenium project. create a lib folder in that and add all jar files which are required.Commmand prompt:
7) navigate to that project folder in command prompt and set all required classpath like bin and lib etc which are already in xml file folder in selenium project which you got from selenium project in eclipse.
8) then type command “Java org.testng.testNG Xml1.xml” which will display results in command prompt/DOS screen
9) now create a batch file “Batch1.bat” which contains the above command and also a command for compiling as e.g “java -cp bin;lib/* org.testng.testNG Xml1.xml”Jenkins setup to build and run the file:
10) in Jenkins, create a “new item” with selection of “Freestyle project”
11) then select “Advance options” and put the Selenium project home directory path in there.
12) the build trigger section, select Batch file execution option in there, then put the batch file name “Batch1.bat”
13) click and save the new item
14) click on “Build Now” and verify the “Console output”

How to configure Hub & Node machines for selenium parallel test execution

Configuring Hub machine

1) Start the command prompt/DOS prompt

2) Navigate to the folder location where the Selenium server jar file is kept.

3) Type java –jar selenium-server-standalone-[VERSION].jar –role hub

Note: [VERSION] is the one your downloaded version of selenium-server-standalone Jar file.

Your will see the below screen

4) Now type: http://localhost:4444 in browser

Your will see the below screen

5) Now type: http://localhost:4444/console in browser

You will see the below screen

Configuring Node machines

Follow the same steps 1 to 2 in node machines

Then type,

Java –jar selenium-server-standalone-[VERSION].jar –role node –hub http://yourHUBmachineIP:4444/grid/register

What is TestRunner in Cucumber

In order to link Cucumber with Selenium WebDriver, you need to start a Java project in eclipse IDE.

Then, add both Cucumber and Selenium jar files

Write test runner code and execute the same . Please refer BDD testing details on Selenium Cucumber

January 24, 2020June 7, 2020

What is Pester

What is Pester Unit testing framework ?

Pester is a Unit testing framework for Powershell development. Pester can be downloaded from Github project and imported to Powershell as a module.
Pester uses a bunch of keywords and assertions to evaluate the code quality.Developer could follow TDD approach which is Test driven Development where Developers first write the test based on requirement and then write the development code. Initially test fails and then development code correction done to make the unit test pass.

January 24, 2020June 8, 2020

What is Findfailed exception in Sikuli

What is Sikul and Findfailed error in Sikuli ?

Sikuli is a GUI automation tool or library that uses images of the object to be automated from any given screen.
So these images are manually pre captured and stored in Sikuli automation framework if you are coding using Eclipse Java for Sikuli implementation.
After capturing the screen images, if you change windows screen resolution, Sikuli may give exceptions while execution and that error will be FindFailed exception. These exceptions will be displayed in error log or console of your IDE.

January 24, 2020February 23, 2020

Sikuli Overview

Sikuli is a Desktop Automation library. This library “sikulixapi.jar” can be imported to any Java Selenium project to automate any desktop app or popup.
Sikuli uses “Screen” Class and it has lots of methods to support GUI interactions.E.g. Screen s = new Screen();s.click(“imageOfButton.png”);Note: Store imageOfButton.png at java root project folder.
Similarly you could do type, doubleClick, find etc methods provided by Screen class.
Sikuli automation is very simple and can be used to replace many day today tasks on outlook, windows software center installation. With that said sikuli can replace some of the robotic process automation done by many tools like Automation Anywhere, UiPath etc.

What is Sikuli Screen, Region, Pattern ?

Sikuli Screen is a class that has lots methods like click, double click, find etc to interact desktop GUI images.

Region class is to target a rectangular area location on GUI using x,y coordinates and width and height to locate the rectangular area.

Pattern class used for image level scanning support

Sikuli Architecture:

Sikuli scripts have Java library that takes care of mouse and keyboard actions using java.awt.Robot. Apart from this, Sikuli using OpenCV library which is C++ engine connected to Java via JNI. OpenCV is a computer Vision and machine learning library used for image recognition.

What is JNI

JNI is Java Native interface, it is java programming interface used to bridge the Java and other non java programming language like C, C++ application/programming frameworks

January 23, 2020September 28, 2020

Angular Overview

Angular Overview
Angular Setup – build your first project !
TypeScript Overview (coming soon)
Data binding
- Event binding
- Two way data binding
- Interpolation
- Property binding
First TypeScript Program
Variable Declaration
Type Assetions
Arrow Functions
Interfaces
Classes
Objects
Properties
Modules
Constructors
Access Modifiers

Angular Overview

Angular development framework is introduced by Google and currently millions of developers are using it. Releases started with AngularJs and then Angular2 , Angular4 and going on.AngularJS to Angular2 is major change.
Native support of Typescript from Microsoft make coding faster and maintainable. Native support from testing tools like Karma and Protractor making this as number 1 choice for dynamic web app automation.

What is NgModules in Angular?

NgModules are Angular class from Angular/core and helps to build modules in Angular application development.

For e.g. you wanted to develop a complex application where many modules are needed for easy implementation. Each module acts like mini application like cart module, creditCard module, etc.

so NgModules combines browser modules, other modules that you develop, decoration, bootstrap etc.

NgModules has declration , import, providers, bootstrap arrays.

Angular Setup

install latest nodejs from nodejs.org
Go to git bash/powershell ISE/CMD
type following commands,
install Angular : npm install -g @angular/cli
ng new my-newweb-app
ng g c myFirstModule (optional)
go to project folder ” my-newweb-app ” via commandline itself
type ng serve -o

Data Binding

Data binding makes the angular applications development very easy.

Data binding helps to do the data synchronization between the template(view/html) and class(typescript code)

There are 4 types of data binding in Angular and are following,

Event binding
Two way data binding
Interpolation
Property binding

What is Interpolation?

For interpolation, double curly braces are used in the template as below,

// app.html is the example for interpolation

<p>{{ name }}</p>

and it stores the variables, then angular checks for the variable and updates the value assigned to the text.

The Typescript app.ts as below to display the name value to app.html.

// app.ts

@Component({
  templateUrl: 'app.html',
  selector: 'app-test',
})
export class AppComponent {
  name = 'Sharath C';
}

What is Property binding?

Property binding helps to set the property of a view element and it uses [] syntax as below

// app.html is the simple for the property binding.

<button [disabled]="buttonIsDisabled"></button>

TypeScript has to be coded as below to pass the property binding to view template. refer the app.ts as example for Typescript passing the property value

// app.ts
@Component({
  templateUrl: 'app.html',
  selector: 'app-test',
})
export class Component {
  buttonIsDisabled = true;
}

Building Angular Data Visualization using ngx-charts

ngx-charts is an open-source, declarative charting framework for Angular projects to build very simplified yet powerful reporting.

Angular will do all rendering and ngx-charts module supports different chart types like bar charts, pie charts, line charts, heatmap, treemap etc, altogether this combo will be useful for any Angular Data visualization projects.

January 22, 2020May 17, 2020

What is Protractor testing framework

Protractor is a test framework mainly intended for Angular and AngularJS applications.

During Protractor execution you no longer need to add waits specifically to wait for your next test. Protractor can automatically execute the next step in your test the moment the webpage finishes pending transaction.

Protractor expected condition setting code sample below:

var expectedCondition = protractor.ExpectedConditions; var elementOne = element(by.id(‘UserId’)); browser.wait(expectedCondition.presenceOf(elementOne), 10000); expect(elememtOne.isPresent()).toBeTruthy();

Protractor vs Selenium

January 22, 2020June 9, 2020

How to set expected conditions in Protractor

How to set expected conditions in Protractor ?

January 22, 2020February 23, 2020

Protractor vs Selenium

Protractor is a test framework mainly intended for Angular and AngularJS applications. Where as Selenium is developed for any Web Browser Automation.

January 21, 2020February 23, 2020

What is Julia

Julia is a programming language suited for Machine Learning. Julia has got lot of advantages compared to Python when it comes to Machine learning.
Julia is compiled at run time and it uses Just in Time compiler and it is fast compiling. Julia’s multiple dispatch very is fast and polymorphic dispatch allows for applying function definitions as properties of a struct.
Julia is specifically made for ML and statistics. Also if you check linear algebra, Julia out performs than Python. For math related operations, Julia works like R programming language and shows better performance than Python.