Rational Performance Tester for z/OS

For multi-user Web applications, reliable, efficient performance is a necessity, not a luxury. Even small performance deficiencies and scalability failures can bring business to a halt or cause customers to take their business elsewhere. In order to capture and correct performance problems before deployment, software development and test teams must proactively measure an application's ability to rapidly and accurately support multiple concurrent users. IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS was built to address this need.

Rational Performance Tester for z/OS helps teams pinpoint system bottlenecks before application deployment by simplifying the creation, execution and results analysis of multi-user performance tests. Tests are recordings of a user's activity within a Web browser; absolutely no programming knowledge is required to understand and modify these tests. Just a few mouse clicks engages a data pooling capability that ensures unique data for each emulated user. Using an intuitive graphical test scheduler, teams can then organize their tests to accurately simulate the different types of users and user activities the application under test will support.

During test execution, while emulating the desired number of concurrent users, Rational Performance Tester for z/OS generates reports that clearly highlight poorly performing web pages, URLs and transactions. Teams are therefore able to expose performance problems in even the most complex systems, increasing the opportunity for problem capture and repair before the system goes live.

Features and benefits of IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS

• Linux-based user interface
  The IBM Performance Tester for z/OS recorder and editor can be used on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Test execution, for load generation occurs on the z/OS platform.

• Visual test editor delivering both high-level and detailed test views
  No programming knowledge is necessary to create, comprehend, modify, and execute a performance test. A test is a graphical illustration of the Web pages that will be visited during execution; no code editing is necessary to create a multi-user test. However, deeper detail is available - advanced testers have access to information about items such as underlying page elements and server responses.

• Flexible modeling and emulation of diverse user populations
  To ensure that your performance testing accurately mirrors your user base, IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS provides a flexible test scheduler that specifies the different groups of users comprising your user population, as well as the activities and usage patterns of each of the user groups.

• A low memory and processor footprint that enables large, multi-user tests with limited hardware resources
  Rational Performance Tester for z/OS can be configured to generate user loads from remote machines using an easily deployed execution agent. This execution agent has been specially designed for low memory and processor usage. As a result, even teams with limited hardware resources are able to generate very high user loads during their performance testing.

• Real-time reporting for immediate performance problem identification
  Rational Performance Tester for z/OS generates performance and throughput reports in real time, enabling you to detect performance problems at any time during a test run. These reports provide multiple filtering and configuration options that can be set before, during, and after a test run. Additional reports are available at the conclusion of the test run to perform deeper analysis on items such as response time percentile distributions.

• Automatic identification of, and support for, dynamic server responses
  Server responses may vary according to what data the user enters. Often, these responses have a bearing on future information that will pass between client and server. IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS can detect these dynamic server responses and automatically make them accessible for re-use in tests involving subsequent server requests. This capability ensures that your tests’ virtual users will accurately simulate the system load of a real world user population.

• Automated test data variation
  Unique users have unique needs and enter unique identifying information. Therefore, each simulated user must enter information to accurately mirror a real-world environment. IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS provides an automated "data pooling" capability that varies the test data set used by each simulated user.

• Collection and visualization of server resource data
  Testers must be vigilant to detect performance and reliability problems that can be traced to hardware issues rather than to software. IBM Rational Performance Tester for z/OS can collect and display multiple server resource statistics, thereby exposing bottlenecks responsible for poor performance.

• Rendered HTML view of Web pages visited during test recording
  Users can review Web pages accessed during test recording using a browser-like window integrated with the test editor. This window shows you what the user would see when visiting a selected page, helping you make more informed decisions about how to modify your tests prior to execution.

• Java code insertion for flexible test customization
  Advanced testers have the option of inserting custom Java code into their performance tests to perform activities such as advanced data analysis and request parsing.