Today, LoadStorm published a press release announcing our new Transaction Response Timing. For many professional performance testers, especially those used to products like HP Loadrunner or SOASTA CloudTest, wrapping timings around logical business processes and related transactions, is a familiar concept. For those of you that aren’t familiar, I’ll explain.
What is Transaction Response Time?
Transaction Response Time represents the time taken for the application to complete a defined transaction or business process.
Why is it important to measure Transaction Response Time?
The objective of a performance test is to ensure that the application is working optimally under load. However, the definition of “optimally” under load may vary with different systems.
By defining an initial acceptable response time, we can benchmark the application if it is performing as anticipated.
The importance of Transaction Response Time is that it gives the project team/application team an idea of how the application is performing in the measurement of time. With this information, they can relate to the users/customers on the expected time when processing request or understanding how their application performed.
What does Transaction Response Time encompass?
The Transaction Response Time encompasses the time taken for the request made to the web server, there after being processed by the Web Server and sent to the Application Server, which in most instances will make a request to the Database Server. All this will then be repeated again in reverse from the Database Server, Application Server, Web Server and back to the user. Take note that the time taken for the request or data in the network transmission is also factored in.
To simplify, the Transaction Response Time is comprised of the following: Processing time on Web Server Processing time on Application Server Processing time on Database Server
Network latency between the servers, and the client