Testing the load of your web applications is very simple. You want to know if your server can sustain the number of requests customers are sending to the servers in your web application environment? If not, you want to know where the problem lies.
Servers in your web application environment may include the application server, the web application server and database server.
An automated web load-testing tool should allow you to test if multiple requests to an application server can be handled in a timely manner. If you have a web application environment with several components, you want to discover if there is a bottleneck within your application environment. However, if you are not monitoring all of the components of the web application environment, you will not understand the root cause of the problem.
When testing a web application with different layers, a database or web server, to get to the root of the cause of a bottleneck, you really have to monitor the different components of the system in one place.
If you don’t run a test across the entire web application environment within the same automated testing application, you will not capture results for every layer of your web application environment at the same time. Your reporting results will not give you a complete overview of your web application environment at one point in time, you will only have part of the picture.
Monitoring each component, or one or two components separately will tell you individually how a particular component is functioning. You will not understand how each component sustains a load when integrated within the entire web application environment.
Therefore, I think many developers make the mistake of not considering their whole environment within a testing framework. If you are going to use an automated testing tool, I’d suggest seriously consider the consequences of not load testing every layer within your web application environment within one load-testing tool. If you do use one tool to test your entire environment, every layer’s results will be integrated with your overall results. You will have a true picture of your entire environment and be able to analyze the reported results together if everything is tested within the same tool set.
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