LoadStorm™

Test data is needed for any quality application that goes through a quality analysis department. Test data is important for any development firm in that it provides a method for quality analysis to manipulate, change, and even destroy otherwise sensitive data. Test data needs to be openly available to internal testing departments so that they can do heavy testing. Their job is to try to destroy your application (although it sounds harsh, it is better for them to find the bug rather than a customer).

Ethical Aspects

Whenever you have a large scale database with multiple tables and numerous requests from users, building tables with perfect indexing can be the difference between great performance or angry users with time outs. Table indexing is often ignored while designing an application. It is usually left to the database administrators to pick up the pieces after an application is promoted and poor indexing causes performance issues. As a great developer, you can avoid the pitfalls of poor table indexing and create a tuned application even on the database backend.

Primary Keys

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

Google App Engine is the perfect tool for python developers in dire need to move their infrastructure to a Python based Cloud. It is still new and growing. It provides static and dynamic generation of content to a user with minimal effort. Once it matures into a real product and branches out its available languages, it may be the tool for you.

Table design is one of those little idiosyncrasies that developers rarely follow, but the best table design can create the best scalability and performance value for a company application rather than worry about it when problems arise.

The Grinder is an open source load testing solution that operates on a Java Virtual Machine. This gives The Grinder a great degree of portability. The tool is also exceedingly simple to set up, requiring only that the user follow a few simple steps. Installing The Grinder is as simple as downloading a JAR file and placing it in the correct CLASSPATH. Once this has been done, the program is easily invoked from the command line.

Developed by SpikeSource, TestGen4Web is a test script creation tool that provides a flexible format that the well known names in automated testing can use. While many programs, such as HTTPUnit, Selenium, and SimpleTest can perform automated testing, they require the user to handcode the transactions. TestGen4Web works to make this process much easier, allowing the user to record transactions for later usage in dedicated testing software.

Produced as a load testing utility, Reality Load XF from Gomez has a full range of features designed to create realistic testing conditions that truly prepare a web application for the rigors of the live production environment. With Reality Load XF, engineers can prototype new functionality without the fear of causing a breakdown in application reliability.

One of the biggest issues a database administrator deals with is the impending performance issues that seem to hit an expanding environment. Smaller businesses can usually handle the simple problems that may interrupt daily activities, but large or medium sized businesses need real solutions to quickly fix problems since performance issues equal lower revenue.

The process of getting started with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and Simple Storage Service (S3) is extremely easy. A entrepreneur with minimal knowledge of Linux and computer systems in general could have a server with Elastic Block Store (EBS) up within a day. The pricing is laid out before hand and demoing the software can be done for under $5 if executed properly.

A friend of mine that works at CIO.com sent me an executive summary for a survey they conducted on cloud computing in August. The results of the survey show how extensively the cloud will affect our web application world in the near future. On the darker side, the results also show how fear, power, and ignorance are holding many back from taking advantage of the many significant benefits of cloud computing.