Editing Software performance testing (section)

== Tools ==
Performance testing is mainly divided into two main categories:

=== Performance scripting ===
This part of performance testing mainly deals with creating/scripting the work flows of key identified business processes. This can be done using a wide variety of tools.

Each of the tools mentioned in the above list (which is not exhaustive nor complete) either employs a scripting language (C, Java, JS) or some form of visual representation (drag and drop) to create and simulate end user work flows. Most of the tools allow for something called "Record & Replay", where in the performance tester will launch the testing tool, hook it on a browser or thick client and capture all the network transactions which happen between the client and server. In doing so a script is developed which can be enhanced/modified to emulate various business scenarios.

=== Performance monitoring ===
This forms the other face of performance testing. With performance monitoring, the behavior and response characteristics of the application under test are observed. The below parameters are usually monitored during the a performance test execution

Server hardware Parameters

* CPU Utilization
* Memory Utilization
* Disk utilization
* Network utilization

As a first step, the patterns generated by these 4 parameters provide a good indication on where the bottleneck lies. To determine the exact root cause of the issue, [[software engineer]]s use tools such as [[Profiler (computer science)|profilers]] to measure what parts of a device or software contribute most to the poor performance, or to establish throughput levels (and thresholds) for maintained acceptable response time.