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Testing and Performance FAQ
Here are some of the most common questions on testing and performance trends, strategies and tools, as provided by our authors for this special report.
Posted September 29, 2003
Q. What are the three main trends in testing and performance?
A. They are: an increased emphasis on testing for leaks in security and authentication; an increase in outsourcing activity; and the need to test software for use in grid computing systems.
Q. Who are the key product vendors in the testing and performance market?
A. According to the Gartner Group, Mercury Interactive has about 50 percent of the market, followed by Compuware and Parasoft. Other leaders are IBM/Rational, Empirix, Segue, and Keynote Systems. Key "niche" players to watch are Telelogic, Quest Software, Solstice Software, and RadView Software.
Q. What is grid computing?
A. Grid computing is one of the latest trends in enterprise IT systems. Ostensibly, the advantage is that companies can save money immediately by using existing computers together with inexpensive newer computers in a fail-safe network powered by a high-end central database and application servers. This opposes conventional thinking that companies have to continually purchase more-and more powerful-computers and software every few years.
Q. What is Enterprise Software Packaging?
A. Enterprise Software Packaging (ESP) is the preparation of standard, structured automated installations for deployment within a specific corporate environment. It plays a key role within the software lifecycle because it takes charge of all the activities that are related to software package preparation and maintenance. This preparation cycle includes five activities: Request; Integration; Product Testing; Quality Assurance; and Release Management.
Q. What are five areas of an application that you can test and/or tune to take advantage of the target server's capacity for concurrency?
A. The five areas that should be tested every time optimization occurs are: input/output; multi-threading and hyper-threading the scheduling apparatus; "critical sections"—places in a multi-threaded application where only one thread can have access at a time; data access and structures; memory allocation and management.
Q. What is the SPIN model checker?
A. SPIN's author, Gerard J. Holzmann, explains that SPIN is a software verification tool that can help users to find and diagnose subtle, concurrency-related bugs in multi-threaded and distributed software systems.
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