In the current project the customer wants to have a simple Performance Compare Test. The customer wants to be sure, that the changes we made inthe software will not worsen the performance. Since the effort to make a full-blown load- and performance test is very high, this Performance Compare Test should be very simple.
The solution I found is the following: We will use Selenium IDE to record and play script. This script will be run on the old and the new version of the software. Because we only want to see, whether our changes have worsen the performance, this is acceptable. In Selenium IDE you have a button „Play with Selenium TestRunner“. In this mode Selenium logs timestamps. We will use these timestamps to measure the time period it takes to click through the application. In the following image you can see the log from Selenium.
The advantages of this:
- Simple to install and easy to use, even on a developer’s machine
- The rendering of HTML and the JavaScript execution is measured as well
You still have to plan the tests, e.g. what test data you want to use and how do you want to click through the application. And of cause – this will not replace a full-blown load and performance test.