Archive for March, 2007
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
One of the great features of Java 5 (see: Pro Java 5 ) is Aspect technology. Here, I'll show you how you can use custom Aspects to instrument your application and monitor using AspectJ and Jamon.
Java 5 Aspects
First, a brief primer primer on Aspects (see the AspectJ web ...
Posted in Monitoring | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
When you record and save a LoadRunner script in Vugen, there are a number of files that are created. Here's what they are, and what they do and identification of the files you can safely delete..
Files Required for Playback
During the course of recording and playback of scripts, the Vugen ...
Posted in Tips & Tricks | 5 Comments »
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Book Description
Analyzing computer system performance is often regarded by most system administrators, IT professionals and software engineers as a black art that is too time consuming to learn and apply. Finally, this book by acclaimed performance analyst Dr. Neil Gunther makes this subject understandable and applicable through programmatic examples. The ...
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Saturday, March 24th, 2007
This is the first in a four part series about finding bottlenecks in an application or system.
Finding Bottlenecks
Finding bottlenecks in a system is one of the primary tasks that a performance engineer or tester performs and, I would argue, one of the most important. Yet is seems ...
Posted in General | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
The WebLogic Diagnostic Framework, while powerful, is not the easiest beast to work with. After a couple of days of messing around with it, I finally figured out how to instrument my application code's methods.
Unless you are the type that reads manuals front-to-back before you embark on a task, ...
Posted in Monitoring | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
TestMaker is a framework and utility that builds intelligent test agents which implement users interactions in several environments. This program is developed in Java (so it is multi-platform) and it is available as open source.
http://www.pushtotest.com/ptt
I haven't played around with it much, but it's on my to-do list. From browsing ...
Posted in Test Tools | No Comments »
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) is a debugging tool introduced in the Solaris 10 Operating System to help debug systemic problems that are difficult to diagnose using traditional debugging tools and mechanisms. This tool
takes advantage of points of instrumentation in the Solaris OS to present information useful for debugging errors and investigating ...
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Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Book Description
Pro Java EE 5 Performance Management and Optimization features proven methodology to guarantee top-performing Java EE 5 applications, and explains how to measure performance in your specific environment. The book also details performance integration points throughout the development and deployment lifecycles that are crucial for application success.
For QA and ...
Posted in Books | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Using LoadRunner's lr_load_dll() function, it is possible to roll your own dll's and use custom functions in your LoadRunner scripts. Here's how.
Mercury's support site gives an example, but it doesn't go far enough to tell you how to actually create the dll. Using Eclipse, here is how to ...
Posted in Tips & Tricks | 3 Comments »
Sunday, March 18th, 2007
From the Back Cover
“As practical as a Swiss Army knife for a power-hungry SysAdmin. For all the Sun gurus, veterans and newbies: This is for you. As a must-have in one's library, it'll be one of your most worn out references in your serious IT career. It is practical and ...
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Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Book Description
The performance testing of Web applications is not understood properly and no skill sets are available to address the challenges faced by practitioners. In addition, there is currently a lack of available research on the performance aspects of the application.
Integrated Approach to Web Performance Testing: A Practitioner's Guide fills ...
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Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Book Description
As long as there's been a Web, people have been trying to make it faster. The maturation of the Web has meant more users, more data, more features, and consequently longer waits on the Web. Improved performance has become a critical factor in determining the usability of the Web ...
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Sunday, March 18th, 2007
Glassbox - http://www.glassbox.com/ - looks promising. It's open source and easy to install.
From the glassbox.com website:
Glassbox is a valuable complement to load testing tools. When you drive load through the app, Glassbox will automatically pinpoint bottlenecks and report their complete stack traces. That means developers will see exactly where ...
Posted in Monitoring | No Comments »
Saturday, March 17th, 2007
How do I achieve good performance?
By performance testing, of course! That's the short answer. In reality, what makes a web site perform well is largely good design, followed by good testing. By my estimate, 80% of a site's performance will come from good design and best practices, while 15% will ...
Posted in General | No Comments »
Friday, March 16th, 2007
It's not as straightforward as you might think or expect, but once setup, gives a lot more insight into the behavior of your applications. Use your favorite JMX client (jconsole, jManage, SiteScope, MC4J, etc.) to monitor thread pools, database connections, memory usage and any other MBean attributes.
There are two ...
Posted in Monitoring | 6 Comments »