Publication

Abstract : Load testing has become the de facto standard to evaluate performance of applications in the IT industry, thanks to the growing popularity of automated load testing tools. These tools report performance metrics such as average response time and throughput, which are sensitive to the test duration specified by the tester. Too short a duration can lead to inaccurate estimates of performance and too long a duration leads to reduced number of cycles of load testing. Currently, no scientific methodology is followed by load testers to specify run duration. In this paper, we present a simple methodology, using confidence intervals, such that a load test can automatically determine when to converge. We demonstrate the methodology using five lab applications and three real world applications.