All professionals in the Software Testing and Quality Assurance domain are certainly familiar with HP’s LoadRunner.
LoadRunner is a popular next-generation performance verification and validation tool brought to you by HP. This is a unique tool through which we can simulate situations with hundreds or thousands of artificial users and we can impose defined, consistent and repeatable loads on the system, thus stressing it from end to end.
LoadRunner is designed to accurately predict actual application behavior and performance, increasing our confidence in the reliability of the new system before it is deployed.
A self-study/training series has been launched where applicants can learn and master LoadRunner through high-quality question answers. By mastering these questions and answers on LoadRunner, one can be confident in this broad topic, while facing interviews in any leading multinational company.
Some of these questions and answers are presented below:
Q.1: What is the purpose of using HP – LoadRunner?
In the real world scenario, it is not possible to create a situation involving, say, a thousand users using a system simultaneously to test the behavior of the system under such stressful conditions. LoadRunner can create such a situation.
LoadRunner artificially simulates several thousand users, which are called virtual users. These artificial/digitally created users are simultaneously forced to operate on the same task, thus loading the system in the way real human users are expected to load it in actual practice.
With LoadRunner we can simulate situations with hundreds or thousands of artificial users and we can impose defined, consistent and repeatable loads on the system, thus stressing it from start to finish. In this way, we can emulate various business processes and production conditions that a deployed application will encounter.
LoadRunner accurately measures, monitors, and analyzes the performance and functionality of a system.
Q2: What are the essential capabilities we look for in a typical application performance testing tool?
The essential capabilities of an application performance testing tool are as follows:
1) You must be able to test a system that combines many software applications and hardware platforms.
2) You must be able to determine the suitability of a server for any given application.
3) You must be able to test the server before the necessary client software has been developed.
4) It must be able to emulate an environment where multiple clients interact with a single server application.
5) You must be able to test an application under the load of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of potential users.
Q.3: What are the drawbacks of manual load testing processes?
Load testing an entire system can be done manually by creating an environment where many users work on the system simultaneously. Each user is made to work on their independent machine and each individual submits information to the system. However, due to the complexity of such a system, there are the following drawbacks
1) Manual test methods offer only a partial solution to load testing.
2) Manual testing is expensive and requires large amounts of labor and equipment.
3) Manual testing is complicated, especially when coordinating and synchronizing multiple testers.
4) Manual testing involves a high degree of organization, especially to record and analyze the results in a meaningful way.
5) Repeatability of manual tests is limited.
Hundreds of similar LoadRunner training questions and answers about this great tool are available here
